I haven't seen The Swan since its premier, but my thoughts keep coming back to it. (Thought of the moment: a SAT-styled analogy. Beauty: television:: Dorian Gray: Dorian's portrait.) This morning, I also went back to The Swan's website for the first time since writing my review, and found it stocked with new features: a "history of beauty," a "timeline" of beauty pageants ("1854: P.T. Barnum tried unsuccessfully to host a beauty contest, discovered no 'self-respecting lady' would participate." Why is "self- respecting lady" in quotes?), and, oh my, a fan club.
And, of course, the "gallery," showcasing contestants' makeovers, has been updated. Look what happened to Kristy:
Kristy, I hope you never read this. After all that work and surgery, you shouldn't be subjected to my opinion that you now look like a drag queen.
When the show first arrived, many critics and bloggers used the term "drag queen" to critique the makeovers' results. At first, I found the term insulting; I think the women still look like women (and, ok, even if they don't, the show's premise makes me pity them and shy away from disparaging their new looks). But, I think the idea of drag, as applied to women, doesn't have to suggest a compromised femininity -- a striving for an idealized female "aesthetic" that, upon failing, reveals a latent masculinity. Rather, it can suggest that such an exaggeration of femininity is unecessary for a female. Theorists may argue that both genders perform their "sex," and that "sex" is not an inherent quality. But "drag" is about play -- it's parody and exaggeration. The Swan conflates sexual appeal with the most obvious signifiers of feminity (large breasts, lips, hair), and consequently its makeovers can't help but suggest the parody of drag: not feminity, but a desperate exaggeration of it.
And that brings me to my readers' comments, which have been piling up on my two previous posts about The Swan. The first five comments on the most recent post come from bloggers and blog-readers. The next seven or eight come from Googlers, who sometimes (understandably?) don't understand what blogs are. One comment-er, for example, writes,
FOX, We love your show The Swan, My daughter asked me why I didn't try to get on the show. She too feels that I need this type of help. Please get my message to Dr. Randal Haworth.Another comment-er, Susan, typed up a long defense of The Swan, which concludes,
I don't think it's fair to make women feel bad or pathetic for wanting to change some physical attributes. So maybe it isn't fair to judge The Swan's producers for capitalizing on this.Further down, a woman writes,As women we should support other women's choices. Perhaps we just don't do that so much when it comes to physical appearance because once a woman is a beauty she becomes a threat. She is competition, and in our world it's survival of the fittest. Like it or not, sex drives the human species and more often than not beauty determines who gets it and who doesn't.
Big deal. It's great entertainment and I am not (too) embarassed to get caught watching it.
Thank you Susan, I am so sick of reading what's wrong with the show, I can't stand it any more. If you feel so strongly about the motives behind it, DAMN IT! STOP WATCHING. I love the show and would also like to know where to sign up. I can tell you right now, I do not have any issues with myself. Hell I just want a flat tummy and a sexy butt (for free!!!) I have to agree when Susan says "most women don't want to see this happen for other women, because then she becomes competition for all of the self rightous people who fail to see their own physical flaws." Get over it, PLEASE! No one is holding a gun to your head making you watch this show, but if you think that it will be cancelled because YOU don't watch, you have another THINK coming.Whoa. Where to begin? Speaking for myself: I really, really, REALLY don't think of these women as competition. (Perhaps I'm too vain to even think in terms of competition, but if vanity or narcissism or "self-righteousness" is what women need to defend themselves against comparisons to actresses and models, I'm all for it.) But, seriously: those who criticize the show are the ones least likely to be jealous of its contestants. I don't think extreme makeovers give the contestants an "unfair advantage"; I think the extreme makeovers are "unfair" to them.
That's the point I'm trying to make. I have little against plastic surgery. My point is not to "make women feel bad or pathetic for wanting to change some physical attributes." What I'm mainly saying is that the show itself encourages women to "feel bad or pathetic" -- by calling insecure contestants "ugly ducklings" and criticizing them when their bodies respond poorly to extensive, painful surgery. As much money as it's lavishing on the women's makeover procedures, The Swan seems deeply unsympathetic, border-line abusive, to them. And, while it may be funny to say the women now look like "drag qeens," the fact that the "drag" aesthetic is so similar to the show's indicates that the show is much more interested in a crass signification of beauty than it is in "individual beauty," just as it only pretends to give a shit about the individuals appearing on it.
I've been behind in my blog reading, and only just got around to The Reading Experience's excellent critique of Emily Barton's review of Gary Lutz's I Looked Alive. Here's a short excerpt of the post to encourage you to click on over there:
Perhaps the most damaging of Barton's criticisms, if it was true, is that Lutz "can't even write prose of middling intelligibility," fails to "maintain a crystalline clarity." Certainly Lutz could write prose of "middling intelligibility" if he wanted to, but he doesn't. He's deliberately confronting the standard of "crystalline clarity," asking why literary experiment can't include experiment with conventional uses of language. In the book's very first paragraph we are told by the narrator that "I had not come through in either of the kids. They took their mother's bunching of features, and were breeze-shaken things, and did not cut too far into life." This is not immediately "informative" in a "crystalline" way, but if you pause (and pause you must, throughout most of this book) and consider it, it makes perfect sense as a description of the way this man might see his children. It's just a "new" way of expressing features we are accustomed to seeing signalled in more familiar phrases.(No comments on the post here, since I already wrote down my reactions in a comment over there.)
As graduation, and the need for a real-world job, approaches, I wonder if Craigslist posts like this one will seem more, or less, funny:
Star Search for Photogenic and Articulate WritersThe same post can also be found at Craigslist under the title "Outstanding Writer Needed to Write About Dogs."
Exciting opportunity with a unique marketing-oriented publishing firm. We are searching for outstanding writers of non-fiction capable of quickly turning exciting topics into mainstream best-sellers. Candidates must have superior writing and speaking capabilities, sparkling personalities and be highly photogenic.
Other job opportunities posted this week:
James Hynes traces the genesis of his latest novel, Kings of Infinite Space, for the Boston Review:
The year my second book, Publish and Perish, came out, I took a job as an office temp for a large Texas state agency, working for eight dollars an hour. This was one of the inevitable low points on the sine wave of my career, a boring day job being the default mode of a midlist writer’s livelihood. Still, I had never worked in an office before, and the experience was more exotic than humiliating…Further down in the essay, Hynes lists some of the book's major plot points:
I had an epiphany one soporific mid-morning when I stood up in my cubicle to stretch myself awake. Turning slowly in place, I scanned a complete 360 of the cube horizon. The scene was slightly underlit, and while I could hear all sorts of human activity—talking, phones ringing, keyboards clattering—I couldn’t see another living person. I felt as if I was working in a room full of ghosts. The alienation of cube life was suddenly revealed to me as something gothic, a variation on the creeping dread of a Poe character. I could be walled up alive inside my cubicle and no one would even notice—the Cube of Amontillado. Immediately I dropped to my seat and jotted down a paragraph that appears almost without revision in my new book, Kings of Infinite Space.
Finally, Paul is increasingly alarmed by a series of odd events at work—strange noises in the ceiling, a mysterious death in the next cube, and unsettling visitations by bloodlessly pale guys in white shirts and ties. On top of all this, Paul continues to be haunted by Charlotte, the cat he drowned in “Queen of the Jungle.” It all comes together in a blood-and-thunder climax featuring ritual human sacrifice and a fight to the death with office equipment.Resistentialism = awesome.
It's hard to know when a link's too old to post, and the longer you think about it, the older it gets. So, I've devised a quick formula for calculating lit links' freshness:
(P ÷ 10) ÷ (DL + C),
where P is the number of pages you've read of the author (or genre) profiled, quoted, or excerpted in the linked-to page; D is the number of days since the link first appeared on a weblog that you read; L is the cumulative number of lines in posts about the link; and C is the number of comments left on those posts. If the resulting number is equal to or greater than 1, the link is fresh enough to post. If the resulting number is < 1, posting the link will broadcast that your blog is the web equivalent of a) a 20-something who recaps episodes of Friends to his family over his cellphone, b) a LES-er who just took up smoking, or c) a mother in a high school carpool who sings along to hip-hop and wears chunky-soled sandals with capris.
An example: I noticed earlier this week that TMFTML had linked to an essay by James Hynes, the author of Publish or Perish. I've read (and liked) P or P, so P is 335. D is 3, L is 7, and C is 4. Plugging the numbers into the formula, I get 1.34. And I'm good to go!
This is kind of cool: Located in the North lobby of the Main Library at University of Iowa, there's a Book Drop Vending Machine, selling "Ethiopian bookbinding kits" and "case construction Journal kits." (If you're not a UI student, you can order the kits here.)
I spent the morning browsing through Glossarist, a searchable directory of glossaries and topical dictionaries. Here, some of my useful, interesting, or unexpected finds, with examples of terms and definitions:
red tideI used to like ads, especially TV ads. I thought there was an artistry to caricature: a visual semiotics testing how much can be thrown out while retaining signification. And, while political cartoons essentialized a politician's features, TV ads caricatured everyday expressions: particularly, looks of discomfort, exasperation, and embarrassment. Over time, these caricatures became a cultural anthropology, tracking trends in expressions and body language.
But, sometime in the past two years, I've stopped liking ads. I feel like one of their characters when I'm watching them: my eyebrows rise with surprise, then plummet with annoyance, and I mouth to anyone nearby, what the hell? The ads are like the ridiculous and offensive characters they contain. But I'm not sure if I've changed, or the ads have. And so, I keep meaning to start a regular column here (Ad-Verse), in which I try to summarize the most offensive trends in ad campaigns. (My last attempt at Ad-Verse was in March.)
Today's trend comes courtesy of Andrea, who has "been badly wanting to develop a lecture series on tampon ad campaigns."
The fact is that they're getting more and more horrific, and I have to attribute this "aesthetic of fear" to intense competition between the feminine hygene companies… When I was going through puberty, tampon companies were still playing nice. Ad rhetoric was all about comfort and ease, assuring young teens that tampons were a cinch to get the hang of and that we wouldn't even be able to feel them in our bodies. But then, sometime around the millenium (perhaps this has some cryptic bearing), I began to notice that the tampon companies were leaving behind the idea of the tampon itself as being a benign, helpful product, and were embracing a more all-encompassing projection of the fear that should be involved while having one's period. Now, instead of comfort being the focus, it was the horror of being in a state of menstration and the way that tampons, including packaging and design, could help to hide this horror from those around us… So anyway, I've long been wanting to do this series examining just what is going on in tampon ads, exactly, and what better ad to kick it off than the one that actually made my jaw drop earlier this month, the ad that is so clearly fucked up that I don't really even have to take the time to go into heavy analysis today (which is good, because I'm tired)?Here's the ad, from the May issue of Seventeen:
"So in 2001 I started a contest much like the Bulwer-Lytton, only with entrants limited to 25 words." The task was "to write the first line of an imaginary novel." The goal was "to make it hilariously bad."
Some of this year's winners:
Dude, this magazine's gonna rock.
A friend from Brown just sent me a link to this ridiculous, but true, Boston Globe article:
Ivy chic? Try Brown"Snazzy" is such a Harvard word. But the Brown girls pictured in this article look putrid.Providence campus wins plaudits for its hip couture
Harvard may have the most money, and Yale corners the market on presidential contenders, but students at Brown University can hold their heads high: They've got the best outfits, according to Women's Wear Daily, the fashion industry bible.
The publication, based in New York City and known to style-minded readers as WWD, ranked the fashion savvy of the eight Ivy League campuses in its annual college issue last week. The results turned the Ivy universe topsy-turvy, with Brown on top, followed by Columbia and Cornell, Princeton in the middle, and Harvard and Yale stuck in the bottom spots on the list.
"It's a rare situation in which a Harvard student isn't at the head of the class," the magazine opined. "But when it comes to matters of personal expression and style, these Cambridge smarties are strictly conservative prep."
Harvard students may write dazzling papers, but their wardrobes are less imaginative, with boring brown loafers, pressed jeans, and barn jackets in heavy rotation, according to WWD. The fashion editors were more impressed on their visit to Providence, where Brown students won high marks for creativity, attributed in part to the close proximity of the Rhode Island School of Design. At Brown, looks on campus range from "downtown New York hipster" to "stiletto-clad sophisticates" and "patchworked bohemians."
News of their victory in the rankings was slow to reach Brown students, with copies of WWD hard to track down in local bookstores. Told about the outcome, few students took the findings very seriously. But neither did they object to beating Harvard -- no matter how vapid the contest.
"It's a silly competition, but we'll take our school pride where we can get it," said Jesse Finkelstein, a senior at Brown, where stylish alumni include John F. Kennedy Jr. and Alex von Furstenberg, son of fashion designer Diane.
Harvard Undergraduate Council president Matthew Mahan defended his school yesterday against the charges of frumpiness. Because winters are so harsh in Cambridge, students "have their overcoats on half the year," giving an edge to campuses in the milder climes of New York and Rhode Island, he said.
"I wish you could see me today," Mahan lamented in a phone interview. "I've got a suit on, with a really snazzy tie."
Scott McLemee links to the first two installments of his Zizek Watch column for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here, a passage from the second column:
And so in February, when BBC Radio broadcast a program called "The Art of Laziness," Mr. Zizek appeared on it as a uniquely qualified expert. He criticized programs that teach relaxation techniques. "If you look closely at their leaflets," he said, "they tell you first that we are hyperactive and should learn to withdraw. But next, the second paragraph, they always say: 'This way you will relax and be even more productive.'"(This reminds me a bit of the advice so often doled out by women's mags: women should be self-sufficient, since that's what attracts men. Anyway, continuing:)
Alluding to the surrealist thinker Georges Bataille, Mr. Zizek denounced "the hidden economy of 'I am lazy a little bit so that I will work better.'" Instead, he offered the example of residents of Montenegro, an earthquake-prone area of the former Yugoslavia. The local ethnic stereotype is that inhabitants of the region are utterly shiftless.*Edgar Bergen, via Charlie McCarthy"The zero-level standard joke about laziness is how a Montenegro guy masturbates," he said. "He digs a hole in the earth, puts his penis in, and waits for the earthquake." The pleasure that Montenegrins take in telling the joke seems to Mr. Zizek to be the correct attitude toward both laziness and political incorrectness.
quick non sequiturs-Mock Turtle Soup comments on the movie trailer for A Series of Unfortunate Events. (Watch the trailer here.)
-"One reviewer claims Deneuve's accounts of missing a flight, buying stockings, and commenting on fellow commuters 'make Marilyn Monroe look like an intellectual.'" The cinetrix rounds up critical responses to Catherine Deneuve's newly published diary, L'Ombre de Moi-Meme (In the Shadow of Myself).
-Upload a picture of yourself, and the Star Estimator will tell you the celebrities you most closely resemble. (Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work on a Mac, which is what I have. Does anyone w/ a PC want to indulge me?)
-"[SingleRepublican.com] initially had a line for one's astrological sign, but dropped it after a member wrote in to say it wasn't a 'Republican thing.'" The Boston Globe looks at a new crop of political dating sites.
-"A creative writing class (of all places) is the setting of New York's hot political drama of the moment, 'Mrs. Farnsworth.'" It's rare, outside of amusement parks, for a line to bring me past so many warning signs.
-This news aggregator looks much better than NetNewsWire. It includes a built-in search feature, colored labels, and "a built-in browser that eases comment-making by loading Web pages - complete with Safari's cookies - directly within itself."
-The Writings on the Stall: I wonder if we react to our body's work being lost to the sewers by smearing shitty poetry all over restroom walls.
-It's nice to know that my rot-scented, ash-carpeted apartment productively dismantles not only my mental health but conventional gender roles.
-Online quizzes are getting increasingly meta. So, why not take the quiz that determines, what kind of quiz-taker are you?
Splinters links to Jonathan Rée's "excellent radio series" Journeys in Thought with Nietzsche, which I plan to listen to soon.
My fondness for N. comes and goes. At thirteen, I bought Beyond Good & Evil and loved it, but the love had less to do with its ideas than the pride I felt in reading it and being seen reading it; even if my classmates had never heard of Nietzsche, I thought the book cover by itself conveyed a stoic intellectualism. (Nowadays, unfortunately, it would probably be mistaken by 9th graders for this.) But then, during my senior year of high school and freshman year of college, I made the common mistake of dating a prospective philosophy major, one of those deeply maladjusted and unhygienic boys who invariably decides, somewhere between the ages of 18 to 20, that Nietzsche is a kindred spirit, and mistakes each conversation for another opportunity to give a long-winded misreading of N. Later in college, single and free to love N. without inciting post-coital speeches on the superman, I signed up for a seminar in continental philosophy and bought most of N.'s books. But halfway into the semester, I got a raging case of mono and had to drop my classes, and ever since have associated the uncracked spines of N.'s books with sickness and failure. And, in general, when it comes to books, I try to avoid a recognition of my avoidance of them by continuing to avoid them.
Earlier this month, though, I reread parts of Tony Davies' Humanism while composing a blog post, and came across several great passages by or about N. Among them, this, which makes me very excited to listen to Jonathan Rée's broadcast:
Unlike other philosophers, before and since, [Nietzsche] offers his ideas not as truth-statements but as poetic fictions, parables, images, which he makes no attempt to separate from his own mood, temperament and personal circumstances. Indeed, he argued that all statements must be read as metaphors of a particular disposition -- physical, psychological, or digestive (he himself was a vegetarian). … The only grounds that remain for distinguishing between statements are the strength, authenticity, and beauty with which they are uttered: their 'will to power.'
John Holbo, one of the Crooked Timber bloggers, recently posted a long piece of commentary on academic blogging, especially blogging concerned with literature. Here, a summary and some responses:
So, when John writes that literary studies can use blogs to generate more "interest and excitement" and then mentions (Cup favorites) Maud Newton and Old Hag, is he implying that these blogs are not only helping literature get more attention, but also helping the state of academic "literary studies"? In my opinion, the lit blogs I read are no better a model for "literary studies" blogs than most other blogs. When a blog's subject is as broad as "literature," the treatment of the subject becomes more important than the subject. Or, more to the point: I don't know how blogging affects the way a subject is treated, and it may be that blogs are better suited for shorter commentary than for longer pieces of scholarship.
UPDATE: After I posted this entry, I spent some time reading the blogs listed under "Literature, language, culture" on Crooked Timbers' sidebar. Most of the blogs, written by graduate students or professors, are diary repositories or anti-Bush portals. I bookmarked the exceptions, and will try to link to some of them soon; for now, I'm linking to just one, Critical Mass. CM's author, Erin O'Connor, has also posted a response to John's post, and the response, unlike mine, benefits from a current and first-hand knowledge of academia. It applauds most of what John wrote, but also expresses "reservations about whether the blog-induced revival Holbo envisions is possible, given academic literary studies' attitudes toward technology and transparency." Erin continues, further down in the post: "…one sign of the systemic disorder of literature departments today is that their members are positively hostile to the idea that their relevance may and should be assessed by--horror of horrors--uncredentialled laypersons, the great nonacademic unwashed."
Meanwhile, the comments on John's post are piling up, and John's responding to them with clarifications and extended definitions. John wants literary scholarship to participate in more "bookchat," a term taken from this speech by Scott McLemee. John summarizes "bookchat" as "saying what you like, what you are enthusiastic about, trying to be smart about it, trying to interest others, but not really worrying about the Big Picture right this second." That's what non-academic lit blogs do, and what literary scholarship, in his opinion, needs to learn to do more often. To that, Chun (link goes to Chun's blog, not his CT comment) responds,
What does trouble me is the repressive tolerance of bookchat Holbo endorses. I, Vidal, and all freedom-loving peoples use the term contemptuously. Like the masturbation it is, I often find reading 4500 empty words about the eternal verities of Henry Green pleasurable. A forty-five word blog-post pointing me to it is even appreciated. The idea, however, that it’s a catalyst for textual and historical scholarship on this novelist is astonishing. Rather, inane, evaluative bookchat is parasitic on scholarship—generally low-level, biographical scholarship—but scholarship all the same. It does not advance knowledge; it uses an appeal to taste and kulchur to sell a certain class of audience to advertisers.Heh. John writes back, "Chun wants literary studies to stay the same, only more so? Phlegm fatale."
Like all good educators, I’m an obscurantist. The circulatory function of bookchat that Holbo mentions is very real and dangerous. The blog can exercise chat. If there is a problem with literary studies, it’s that it isn’t sufficently phlegmatic. Consider Pinker’s parable about the elephant’s trunk, for example.
This week, Freaks and Geeks finally made it to DVD, prompting Slate's Alex Abramovich to ask if the show was simply "too real" to have made it on network TV.
How could a show that meant so much to so many disappear so quickly? Watching the DVDs, a better question presents itself: How did a show like this get made in the first place? As it happens, Freaks and Geeks was green-lighted by NBC's West Coast chief Scott Sassa during a lull in which the network found itself temporarily bereft of a programming director. It was written, cast, and filmed with little guidance from network executives, and its roster of mathletes, midgets, bullies, and burnouts had little in common with the Vogue-worthy stars of shows like The O.C. "The problem with TV now," Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig told LA Weekly not long after the series was canceled, is that "you have to make friends immediately—which is why the network wants actors to be beautiful. … You become infatuated with them, and you'll watch week after week because they're beautiful and they're your surrogate boyfriend/girlfriend."…When NBC did appoint a programming director—the preppy Garth Ancier, who would go down in infamy among the show's fans, and go on to run the WB—word filtered down to producer Judd Apatow that the executive was bewildered by Freaks and Geeks' worm's-eye view of life at a blue-collar public school. For Ancier, it seems, television served not to reflect reality, or intensify it, but to offer ways in which we might escape it: "He would like the kids to have more victories," Apatow wrote, in a show diary published in the Los Angeles Times. "I tell him the point of the program is to show how our characters survive the obstacles of high school with their compassion and sense of humor intact." Somehow, Apatow failed to get his point across: "I just want the work to be truthful," he continued. "Why do you want it to be truthful?" Ancier is supposed to have replied. "It's TV."
I've been reading lit blogs all afternoon and feel like the fat kid getting lapped, once, twice … I'm trying to resist the temptation to start walking.
But, I've been online all week. I'm just working on a couple other projects, in particular setting up another blog, which I'll introduce tomorrow or Monday. And, the redesign -- oft mentioned, but never seen -- is coming along slowly but nicely, and should arrive here soon.
But, before I get lapped again, here's some good links:
-I've always been a fan of Studio 360, and especially enjoyed today's show, which featured Terry and included segments on critics' mistakes, the challenges of reviewing children's lit, and Ryan Adam's dislike for a certain critic.
-During his interview with Studio 360's Kurt Anderson, Terry mentions that, when teaching students how to write criticism, he recommends investing extra energy in the plot summary and treating description as a form of commentary. In his NY Times review of Bergdorf Blondes, Choire shows how it's done: "So: a nameless Manhattanite narrator and her best friend, the callous and severely blond shoplifting enthusiast Julie Bergdorf -- yes, that Bergdorf -- decide they must score P.H.'s (Prospective Husbands). … At Muffy's big charity ball, our narrator snaps up a P.H. herself, a Hot Young Photographer. Ka-ching! … Finally, after a tumultuous interlude of oral sex -- during which she text-messages Julie -- he dumps her."
-Popular girls are rounded up, sequestered, and closely studied.
-Beatrice critiques the first installment of "Pulps".
Gail Armstrong, of Open Brackets, explains why "a collection of the correspondence between authors and their translators would make for a fine and fascinating book":
Collaboration (if any) is generally in writing in the author’s native tongue and, although proud to be read by foreigners, many a writer remains wary of the translator’s abilities to transport him unscathed over seas. Not always without reason.And so a full spectrum of relationships ensues: from openly hostile to be always mine love, by way of reluctant professionalism, obsequious gratitude, and a two-way longstanding mentor-student tug.
On the openly hostile front we have many notorious tales – including those of Nabokov, his Vera and their crisp new Swedish dictionary, scouring the translation of Pnin word by word, then calling for a ritual burning.
Of Kundera who rejected the first three English translations of The Joke, only to later stitch together a “definitive” version using bits of all three, adding: “O ye translators, do not sodonymize us!”
And of old Isaac Bashevis Singer who puffed: “There is no such thing as a good translator. The best translators make the worst mistakes. No matter how much I love them, all translators must be closely watched.” Nobel, indeed.
In the who the hell does this guy think he is category, we have Borges’s longstanding American translator cum tagalong Norman Thomas di Giovanni who diluted and undid stunning prose for what he ruled the American ear, saying the process of translating Señor B., “I liken to cleaning a painting; you could see the bright colours and sharp outlines underneath where you couldn’t before.” [more>]
CNN reports on the annual "Who Reads What?" list, out in time for National Library Week. But, I'd like to know: did the celebrities list their favorite books, or the books they're currently reading? Somehow, the article treats the two possibilities as interchangeable -- as if reading is such a rare activity for celebrities, they're entitled to pretend the past tense is the present. Worse yet, the books named in the "What They're Reading" side panel sound like they're cribbed off an 11th grade syllabus -- implying that most people haven't read much since high school, or read so little in high school they're still catching up.
Beverly Tang reports on Morphogenesis research: "Looks like in just 10 years, we will have a pill for growing a body part."
John Lennon has sold (about a million times) more records. David Bowie has gone through more dazzling reinventions. Kurt Cobain is the grunge James Dean. Elvis Presley sums up an entire narrative about what is meant to be rich and famous in 20th century America. Michael Jackson has the best moves and is way, way weirder. None of them, however, is Morrissey. To be Morrissey is to be the most feverently worshipped pop star of all time, the man whose song 'Meat Is Murder' turned a generation vegetarian, an icon who promoted celibacy, Oscar Wilde and '60s kitchen sink dramas when all around him was empty '80s flash.This Charming Man transcribes NME's interview with Morrissey.
links catch-upmedia
-'Apprentice' manages mythic, cheesy finale / Bill Gets the Job on 'The Apprentice' / Apprentice After Party
-Twins are copies and so are their films
-"The runner-up in the competition admitted during her interview that her proudest achievement was founding a program pairing 'stray animals with stray children'": Amy's Robot watches Miss USA.
-"The Hung craze has arrived on the heels of a cinematic season seemingly devoted to emasculating Asian males."
-band name origins
-celebrities-eating.com (via New Yorkish)
-Jennifer Garner's yearbook photo
-The Cinetrix, for the benefit of those without Wall Street Journal subscriptions, quotes from a WSJ article on "Machinima," "an emerging genre of low-budget videogame-generated films." More on Machinima here, here, and here.
blogs + web things
-Sharpeworld's back
-A9 combines Google results with Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" service.
-And now Google does the same?
-Also: a 3D search engine
-RSS feeds for your favorite ebay searches
-unconscious mutterings, a free association meme
more
-Chinese ice sculptures
-pigments through the ages
-Frankfurt Artist Marie Krebs has designed a uterus room for expectant parents to crawl into. (via quasimeta)
-TieGate! and The Bush Press Conference Response Generator
-Cicada: The other, other white meat
-What songs should you avoid when driving?
The New Republic introduces "Pulps":
[What Is Pulps? The criticism of literature has always been one of the fundamental tasks of The New Republic, but there is a difference between the criticism of literature and the criticism of books. Not all books are literature. Yet it is a fundamental fact of American life that large numbers of Americans read books that are not literature. Even if some of those books do not warrant literary examination, they certainly warrant cultural examination. A nation's highest and lowest notions of itself may be found in its amusements. Thinking about America's popular books is a way of thinking about America. In the 1950s and 1960s, critics such as Robert Warshow and Mary McCarthy and Dwight Macdonald taught by example how, and why, intellectual seriousness may be brought to bear upon things that are not intellectually serious; and, in recent decades, with mixed results, the discipline of cultural studies was established on this premise. The aim of this feature of TNR Online will be to toil in the same vineyards, though rather more snappily. Pulps will regularly visit the best-seller list and linger over thrillers, romances, fiction, non-fiction, and even (as The New York Times puts it) "advice, how-to, and miscellaneous" books, as documents of our time, for the purpose of a brief but undoubtedly penetrating exercise in cultural anthropology. After all, influential ideas have a way of turning up in the strangest places. A warning: Pulps will give away the books' plots. Critics have a way of spoiling all the fun.]
I Love Books is asking readers for their favorite sentences from novels. Among the responses:
"He gave me a look, a kind of wide-eyed, reproachful look, such as a dying newt might have given me, if I had forgotten to change its water regularly."I've always struggled naming "favorites." I'm disorganized and I have a bad memory, but, also, books are moments more than texts to me. A sentence fits my mood, and the more precise the tailoring, the less likely it is the sentence will fit other moods as well.
-P.G.Wodehouse"I was never sure I wanted to get married. But I always knew I wanted a divorce."
-Joseph Heller, Something Happened"The most time-efficient way to say no to something is to say yes, and then never do it."
-Scott Adams- The Joy of Work"It was an uncertain spring."
-Virginia Woolf, The Years.
"He noted with distaste his own trick of appealing for sympathy. A personality had its own ways. A mind might observe them without approval."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"The satisfaction she took in herself was positvely plural — imperial."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"And inside the train on the worn green bristle of the seats, Father Herzog sat peeling the fruit with his Russian pearl-handled knife. He peeled and twirled and cut with Europeam efficiency."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"…lights like drops of fat in yellow broth…"
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"Her decisiveness fascinated him, and in such fascination he discovered his own childishness."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"'Poor Moses — unless you're having a bad time with a woman you can't believe you're being serious.'"
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"I love my children, but I am the world to them, and bring them nightmares."
-Saul Bellow, Herzog
"I cried everynight as I rocked you to sleep. You must have grown up thinking my sobbing was a song."
-Carole Maso, The Art Lover
"He drank till he became drunk, his eyes moist, his laugh general."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"The night, intent seamstress, fed the fabric of water under the needle of our hull, steadily, firmly, except the boat wasn't stitching the water together but ripping it apart into long white threads."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"The silence was thoughtful, as though it were an eyelash beating against a pillowcase."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"I hypothesized a lover who'd take me away … His delay in coming went on so long that soon I'd passed from anticipation to nostalgia."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"That a life could be changed posited the still more thrilling notion that one had a thing called a life, a wonderful being that was growing silently inside like an infant."
-Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story
"'Let's go,' he said, repeating her words, clicking them out, however, with a self-consciousness that made her wince."
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
"For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarly empty.) It was one's body feeling, not one's mind."
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
"'A face is like a name … Yet there comes a time when you stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself: this is my self? And why? Why did I want to identify with this? What do I care about this face? And at that moment everything starts to crumble. Everything starts to crumble."
'What starts to crumble? What's the matter with you, Agnes? What's the matter with you lately?'
She glanced at him, then lowered her head. He looked incorrigibly like his mother."
-Milan Kundera, Immortality
"No, thinks Rubens; in the instant that he grasps the comical, man does not laugh; laughter follows afterward as a physical reaction, as a convulsion no longer containing any thought."
-Milan Kundera, Immortality
"Agnes did not want Paul to suffer from a sense of guilt. Not out of compassion for him, but rather out of jealousy: she didn't want him to feel so responsible for Laura, to be so tied to her in his thoughts."
-Milan Kundera, Immortality
That's all I'll type for now. Maybe I'll continue, in another post, sometime soon.
Bunsen previews FOX's latest foray into the reality TV genre: Celebrity Swan.
Amanda: Ok, team, what are we going to do with Pamela?A woman in a lab coat, the team's therapist, steps forward.
Therapist: Pam's had a lot of turbulence in her personal relationships. I think this makeover can make her feel like she deserves all the love that's showered on her.
Video: Tommy Lee sits on the edge of a waterbed.
Tommy: Yeah, we're thinking of getting back together. She's a great chick, really, she is. Her tits could be bigger though, you know? I mean, they're big? But like, they could be... [inflates his cheeks and pantomimes juggling two beach balls] You dig? Also, I got her when she was a lot younger. Can we do anything with those little wrinkle things around her eyes? I'm banging this chick that pees on people in Penthouse, and she doesn't have those. Whaddya think? Also, fix her ass. I don't think I need to explain that one.
Amanda points to a team member with a stethoscope around his neck. He's the plastic surgeon, and he's trying to look down the therapist's blouse.
Amanda: Doctor, what do you think we can do for her?
Surgeon: This is gonna be a total home run. We're gonna blow up those fun bags like the Underdog float at the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. We'll do the same with her lips, because Tommy looks like a lip man. I'll lipo the inside of her thighs so that there's the official four-inch clearance between them. We're gonna settle for nothing less than Hollywood perfection, Amanda!
Amanda: Anyone else?
Nutritionist: Pam's already on the Atkins, so we're gonna go ahead and cut out all of those proteins. Nothing but water and sawdust for two months!
Amanda: Looks like we've got our work cut out for us, team! Let's meet our next lucky girl!
The mansion's double doors burst open, and Kathy Griffin enters. [more>]
Margo Jefferson writes on quote collectors and collections for the New York Times:
Unreliable or omniscient, I would be the narrator in control.From the age of fourteen to seventeen, I was an avid quote collector. So, after reading Jefferson's article, I entered, folder by folder, the bowels of my hard drive, launched OS 9, and spent some time with a rarely visited, but very familiar, quote collection. Here, the quotes that I loved in my most formative years (and still love in what I hope to God are my least formative years):So I kept notebooks of quotations. Lots of people do. Reading them over lets you scan your own temperament. The words of writers you admire provide a trustworthy language for your desires and for how you'll feel when life ambushes them. They relieve you from being brave enough to say what feels unsayable. Notebooks like this are an informal history of your reading. If you forage through books instead of reading one at a time, the order of entries can look random. Rereading reveals -- or imposes -- a structure, a map of associations.
BeautyPeople say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
—Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian GrayCalifornia
Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
— Ross MacDonald(Note to readers: my high school was near the California shore.)
Change
I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.
— Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics
CynicismThe cynics are right nine times out of ten.
—H. L. Menchen (1880- 1956)Education
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry AdamsThe test and the use of man’s education is that he finds pleasure in the excercise of his mind.
— Jacques Barzun, in Saturday Evening Post“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied, “and then the different branches of Arithmetic— Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in WonderlandOne had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problem distasteful to me for an entire year.
— Einstein, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mostly in need of freedom; without this it goes to ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
— Einstein, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”You say I was an unschoolable boy at a bad school. But what is an unschoolable boy? I was greedy for knowledge, and interested in everything, and if school taught me nothing except that school is a prison and not a place of teaching, the conclusion is that pedagogy is not yet a science.
— Bernard Shaw, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
— G.M. Trevelyan, English Social HistoryI have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
—Mark Twain (1835-1910)Education is an admirable thing, but it well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
— Oscar Wilde, IntentionsEgotism
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
—Lucille S. HarperEgotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
—Ambrose BierceFear
Always do what you are afraid to do.
—Ralph Waldo EmersonFriendship
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
—Ralph Waldo EmersonGoodness/Rightness
No good deed goes unpunished.
—Clare Boothe LuceAlways do right- this will gratity some and astonish the rest.
—Mark TwainHell
Hell is other people.
—Jean-Paul SartreHell is a half-filled auditorium.
—Robert FrostHonesty
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
—Tom StoppardHumility
Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
—Golda Meir to a visiting diplomatIgnorance
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
— Sydney HarrisLife
Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.
— PlatoEverything has been figured out, except how to live.
—Jean-Paul SartreLogic
Logic is in the eye of the logician.
—Gloria SteinemMedia
lmitation is the sincerest form of television.
—Fred AllenMediocrity
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle(Note: I wrote the last quote down when I was fifteen, after losing a creative writing contest.)
The average person thinks he isn't.
— Father Larry LorenzoniMind
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
— John Milton, Paradise LostOther
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target. - Ashleigh Brilliant
In time of war the first casualty is truth.
- Boake CarterDiplomacy is the art of saying "Nice Doggie! " till you can find a rock.
- Wynn CatlinIt is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
—Winston ChurchillSometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
— Sigmund FreudNever mistake motion for action.
—Ernest HemingwayFew things are harder to put up with than a good example.
—Mark TwainThe gods too are fond of a joke.
—Aristotle
How can l lose to such an idiot?
— A shout from chessmaster Aaron NimzovichNo Sane man will dance.
—CiceroThree o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
—Jean-Paul SartreIf you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
—Alice Roosevelt LongworthGlory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
—Napoleon BonaparteGive me a museum and I'll fill it.
—Pablo PicassoAssassins !
—Arturo Toscanini to his orchestraThe longer l live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950)Prejudice
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
—Albert EinsteinCriticism is prejudice made plausible.
— H. L. MenckenSelf as Enemy
Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
—Thomas Browne, Religio MediciHe is his own worst enemy.
—Cicero of Julius CeaserSelf-criticism
All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. It has all the invidiousness of self-priase, and all the reproach of falsehood.
— Samuel JohnsonSelf-knowledge
He who knows others is learned
He who knows himself is wise.
—Lao-Tzu, Tao-te ChingReal knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
—ConfuciusSilence
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
—Charles Caleb ColtonWe have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
—EpictetusThe world would be a happier place if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
— Benedict De Spinoza, EthicsTemptation
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
—Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian GrayThought
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
—Bertrand RussellWhether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
—Henry FordTruth
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
— Andr GideThe opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
— Niels BohrWords
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
—Abraham LincolnWhen ideas fail, words come in very handy.
— GoetheWriting
There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
— Flannery O'ConnorWhy don't you write books people can read?
—Nora Joyce to her husband James
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
— T. S. EliotFrom the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
—Groucho Marxl have read your book and much like it.
—Moses HadasEverywhere I go I'm asked if l think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
—Flannery O'ConnorIn science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
—Paul DiracI can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody - who can write better.
—A. J. Liebling
Andrea writes about a recent visit to the San Pedro Aquarium:
There, all by itself, was a lone sea horse. And above it? A bold sign and makeshift shrine, announcing it as "The Sea Animal Of The Moment."Brett was taken aback that the aquarium would have the nerve to designate one of its charges as the "It Girl" of the entire place. Me? Not so much. Life is cruel. It's dog eat dog. Seahorse eat jellyfish. Shit happens.
The seahorse knew it was the animal of the moment. I don't know what sex it was, but I will say that it had its tail wrapped around an underwater plant and was sort of fawning nonchalance, like the hot girl at the party who stakes out the spot next to the banister and leans on its rail so that everyone has to pass her on the way to the keg. The seahorse soaked in its fabulousness, wondering when Elisha Cuthbert's managers were going to call and realize they had yesterday's pie on their hands, and that the real deal was down near the port. [more>]
The UglyZoo: an uneven gallery of photoshopped chimaeras. Scrolling through them, I rated each collaged animal on a scale of "harmless" to "desperately evil"; I wasn't even aware of what I was doing, but my fight-or-flight response is, despite always prompting flight, strong and swift. The lesson I learned, after averaging my instinctive ratings: beaks are sharp; a bird's eyes display no knowledge of sympathy; simians are silly; and all cats have a borderline personality disorder.
(But, mainly, birds are evil and if they were bigger, would rule us all, patrolling the streets with badges and a self-righteous swagger. They'd have awful, thoughtless tempers, and feel no compunction tearing apart children who are on the streets after curfew. The birds would also, very often, turn against each other, keeping us still in our beds at 4 am, listening to the long score of prehistoric, squacking, mid-air battles.
In the morning, we'd be forced to clean up the loser's remains: a full claw under blinking traffic lights in an empty intersection; clumps of feathers and red skin on doorsteps and playgrounds; feathers scattered like autumn leaves at the fight's epicenter.
Most of our cars would have roofs punctured by the birds' claws. Driving, we often see birds riding on cars, a military presence asserting itself. The birds shit on our cars, too, without compunction, and, often, neighbors, too disheartened to clean the mess, abandon their cars in their driveways. That's usually the first sign of a neighbor's depression, and, after that, we might only see the neighbor stepping back from her bedroom window, replacing her worn, anxious expression with the curtains.)
-The NY Times printed a short, but glowing, review of A Terry Teachout Reader. It articulates many of the reasons I read, and encourage my readers to read, Terry's blog:
Cultural critics may lack the depth of knowledge that comes with specialization, but Terry Teachout's self-issued carte blanche to submerge himself in whatever he wants (he is the music critic of Commentary, the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, and ''critic-for-hire'' on everything from opera to television for many other publications) has left him with an unusual and singular perspective on the last 15 years of American cultural activity. Now that the country has crossed its ''great cultural and technological divide,'' Teachout writes, as well as finally left postmodernism behind, he hopes his collection will ''have some value as a chronicle, a road map of how we got from there to here.'' That the 58 engaging essays in ''A Terry Teachout Reader,'' on subjects ranging from Dawn Powell and Louis Armstrong to David Ives and Martha Graham, tell us as much about America as they do about Teachout's evolving sensibility makes the book an intellectual memoir by way of enthusiasms. His detailed snapshots of bygone cultural moments are introduced by a thoughtful history of our cultural climate over the last half-century.
-Workshop friend Daniel Alarcón has a story in the debut issue of Swink. You can read an excerpt of his story, "Florida," online. (Last night I saw the chosen cover for Daniel's upcoming collection, War by Candlelight. Pretty awesome: the cover, but also the reality of his success.)
I watch American Idol very infrequently, but I'm always ripe for reading nasty take-downs of Idol performances. Which gets me thinking: If "snark" is wrong, is it wrong because it's easy, or because it's disrespectful? I think the intelligence that cruelty requires is often underestimated, so my only objection to "snark" could be its disrespect to an artist's effort and intelligence. Luckily, American Idol has never required, nor encouraged, respect for its contestants.
And that brings us to Linda Holmes' article from Thursday:
‘American Idol’ gives too much power to the PeopleLinda observes that the singers loved by People generally have two things in common: youth (which attracts youth, the only ones "blessed with large [enough] quantities of free time" to redial their votes "for the entire time that the phone lines are open"), and a high-pitched loser vibe.
Rabid fans help untalented performers…Unfortunately, more and more, "Idol" is not about the people. It is about the People.
Who are the People? You know them if you've been where rabid "Idol" fans gather. They are the Ruben People. The Kelly People. The Jon Peter Lewis People. And, of course, the People who perfected Peopledom: the Clay Aiken People. They scream. They go to war with opposing factions … They trade low-quality MP3 files of contestants' bootlegged high school choir practices and try to give away sample CDs to unsuspecting strangers on the subway…
Jon Peter Lewis is a perfect example of a guy who really isn't very good, but has People anyway. They're the ones who fell in love with him during his bizarre performance of "A Little Less Conversation," which featured bad singing, apparent loss of motor control, and quite possibly appendicitis.
…The problem with People, of course, is that they don't respond to talent so much as to the ability to attract vaguely obsessive personalities. A cynic might argue that "A Little Less Conversation" was no accident — it was a well-planned effort at People recruitment. If it was, it was brilliant, because one of the rules of People is that People love geeks. They love underdogs, they love losers, and they love everyone who is picked on by Simon Cowell. Many mid-level performers struggle in the early rounds, but the real stinkers? The ones it hurts to listen to? They've always got People.
We love to hate reality TV, and reality TV knows that. It cues our hate to keep us watching, like a bullfighter taunting a bull: waving red to draw our attention and anger. Usually, the red flag — the brandished target for our hate — is a loathsome character, the best example from this season being The Apprentice’s Omarosa. And, for the joy of the game, we pretend that the flag is live prey, rather than a manipulation introduced and controlled by the bullfighter.
But The Swan, which ran an encore debut last night, drapes the red around the bullfighter and knots it like a cape. Other shows have had equally shallow and enraging premises —remember Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? But the premise always drew equally shallow and enraging contestants, while the contestants on The Swan don’t seem shallow so much as insecure and clueless. The show itself is the villain, the only target for our hatred. But the question is, is The Swan purposefully loathsome, or just deeply hypocritical?
In defense of the latter, Swan creator Nely Galan told The Boston Herald that she thinks of The Swan as the "most loving `lottery for women' show in the world." (In each episode, the show gives two contestants a three month makeover, worth about $250,000, and awards one of the two contestants a spot in “The Ultimate Swan” pageant.) “The competition, Galan said, serves dual purposes, to motivate the contestants and to ‘demystify’ the pageant process for viewers.”
If you still have doubts that The Swan is hypocritical rather than intentionally loathsome, it’s worth mentioning that Galan has also cast herself as a “Swan Coach,” placing herself on the “panel of experts” responsible for guiding and performing the contestants’ makeovers. A producer aware of her show’s dubious morality probably wouldn’t award herself a starring role.
 |
|---|
| Kelly |
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| Rachel |
  |
| "a lot of work.” |
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| Kelly's stick figure drawing |
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| “a more alluring, tantalizing face” |
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| the "after" shots |
 |
| Who "surrendered to 'transformation'"? |
Redefining “Cute” and “Average”
Each episode of The Swan begins with a Clearinghouse Sweepstakes-styled door ambush; a contestant unlocks her front door and, too overwhelmed by the news of her winning entry, sobs behind the screen door she forgot to open. Cue a video montage, a “greatest hits collection” of the contestants’ insecurities. Contestant No. 1, Kelly, got spit on as a kid, and, because she hates her body, has only “been intimate [with her boyfriend] seven or eight times in the past three years.” Cue the panel’s reaction: sympathetic winces, sad nods, faux-pensive expressions. One by one, the panel members list the improvements they can offer Kelly. “You know, she’s cute. This will be pretty easy,” one plastic surgeon says, before rattling off the ten invasive surgical procedures Kelly “requires.”
Contestant No. 2, Rachel, confesses in her video montage, “I feel average because I look at myself and that’s what I see.” Her husband adds, “She’s a little average, but when she’s happy, she’s a beautiful person.” The panel, shocked by the husband’s insensitivity, immediately questions the degree to which the “men in her life have been supportive of her.” They all agree that they can give Rachel “new confidence.” “The key will be bringing out her femininity,” notes a male panel member. And then, prepping his Swan associates for the challenge, adds, “It’ll take A LOT of work.”
The Work Begins:
In the dentist’s office, the women’s teeth are cleaned, drilled, and, for the purpose of veneers, ridged like Ruffles chips. At the gym, they’re weighed and assigned workouts and low calorie diets. (“Kelly’s got a lot of weight to lose if she’s going to be the one to win the pageant,” the trainer comments.) Next, they prep for surgery. Rachel looks at her unaltered face one last time; this will be “a nice memory,” she says. And Kelly shows her surgeon a stick figure drawing of herself, each body part circled and claimed by a friend or family member.
The surgery itself whizzes by, edited down to its least bloody moments: a surgeon slices with a foot-long blade, the body barely wobbling with resistance; sheaths of fat are loosened and removed; a surgeon looks at Kelly’s stick figure drawing, calls out the name printed by the butt, and says, “This butt’s for you.” Then, Rachel and Kelly are wheeled away, motionless and mummified, while Rachel’s surgeon proudly states, “I’ve given [Rachel] a more alluring, tantalizing face.”
Though both women have undergone extensive surgery — almost every aspect of their face and body altered —Kelly has a much more difficulty recovery. “I’m concerned about Kelly’s attitude,” Nely Gana, Swan Coach, confesses. “She’s been whiny and depressed since surgery.” And, in a more exasperated tone: “We’ll have to go see her.”
During Nely’s visit, Kelly points to the parts of her body that hurt most. Nely is unimpressed. “She’ll have to pull herself together and fight this depression if she’s going to get into the pageant.” Meanwhile, Rachel, more fully recovered, attends therapy, filmed for the audience’s benefit.
The Reveals: Induced Prosopagnosia
It’s been three months since the contestants arrived, and at least two since they’ve been allowed access to a mirror. So, while other makeover shows stage a “Reveal” for the benefit of friends and family, The Swan’s reveal is meant for the participants themselves.
Finally confronted by their new selves, both women cry and have trouble standing. “I don’t look anything like that girl,” Rachel says, triumphantly, though we’re unsure if “that girl” refers to her image in the mirror, or her old appearance. “How will your husband react?” she’s asked. He’s going to be “stunned,” she says. “There is no way he’ll recognize me.” Kelly, during her reveal, is asked how her boyfriend will respond. “I don’t even recognize myself. I bet he would pass me on a street,” she answers. “Oh, I don’t think so,” someone says —and though that implies her boyfriend has a roaming eye, this cues the panel’s fierce nodding and applause.
Asked about the women’s transformations, Kelly’s surgeon says, “I was concerned Kelly would go into a challenging post-operative depression, but with the help of the swan team, we got her through it.” And Rachel’s surgeon comments, “Rachel’s gone from being average to being a fully confident, beautiful woman.”
In the end, Rachel wins, because, according to Nely, “she surrendered to ‘transformation.’”
Returning to the Question: Loathsome or Loathsome and Hypocritcal?
•The panel expresses shock at Rachel's husband calling her "average," only to use the same word when describing her --- that is, when they aren't using the more premise-sanctioned phrase "ugly duckling."
•In a bid to raise the contestants' self-esteem, they make the contestants believe they need each face and body part resculpted. The women, though, aren't that bad looking, and, in the following weeks, the women, if anything, get cuter.
•While the surgery on Extreme Makeover "improves" participants' faces but keeps them recognizable, the surgery on The Swan turns the women into caricatures, with bloated lips (that look modeled on Nely's), small, curved noses, and x-large breasts.
•The contestants are supposed to "surrender" to the "Swan program" without complaint. Any form of rebellion, like pain or depression, barrs them from the pageant.
Unfortunately, The Swan is loathsome to the degree that it takes itself seriously, and, thanks to the panel's complete lack of intellect, it takes itself very, very seriously. The Swan simply isn't smart enough to realize how disturbing it really is: the panel applauds the idea that the women's husbands will no longer recognize them because it marks their success in creating "transformation," not because they know their applause will reveal a shockingly brazen attitude towards the relationship bewteen appearance, familiarity, and emotional attachment. And, while Kelly and Rachel only have a boyfriend and a husband who might fail to recognize them, future contestants will have children. (At 24, I still remember the day when I was five and my father, having just shaved his beard, picked me up from a friend's party. I cried and cried; even if I recognized him, my emotions for him didn't --a face being both love's cue and its subject.)
Similarly, the panel members are incapable of thinking through the concepts that they hawk (self-improvement, confidence, self-esteem), preferring to equate the concepts with the show's premise -- a conflation as lazy as it is self-congratulatory. The "beauty pageant," which at first we hope functions mostly as metonymy, standing in for the more abstract idea of self-improvement, quickly asserts itself as that idea's replacement. (“Kelly’s got a lot of weight to lose if she’s going to be the one to win the pageant.”… “She’ll have to pull herself together and fight this depression if she’s going to get into the pageant.”)
In the end, The Swan has more sympathy towards its premise than it does for its contestants, and its audience is likely to dole out sympathy in the opposite proportions. We may find a woman's long list of physical insecurities disturbing, but far more disturbing is the person who, by eradicating the source of each insecurity, confirms each insecurity as justified.
Jannemiek Sonneveld, 27, turns her left eye to show the latest thing in body fashion, the Jewel Eye, in her hometown Driebergen, the Netherlands April 7, 2004. The eye jewel, made of platinum and available in the shape of a heart, a star or circle, is implanted under the cornea of the eye and is not visible unless the eye is turned. The procedure costs 500 euros.
the art-of-factwriting
-Spike Magazine interviews J G Ballard.
-On the Nature of Literary Friendship, A Web Del Sol series (last two via Rake's Progress)
-Alice Hoffman writes on fairy tales for the Washington Post
-The Boston Globe looks at the American Library Association's "Celebrity READ" poster series and suggests alternate book selections for the celebs. (last two via bookslut)
-Maud quotes from a great exchange between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson.
-Slate's Jack Shafer, on the Pulitzers, asks "Who cares?" and Ed answers, "Who cares about Jack Shafer?"
-Meanwhile, Terry describes and comments on the runners-up for the Pulitzer drama prize. On Omnium Gatherum: "In an inept attempt at subtlety, each guest is made to say one or two things inconsistent with his or her caricature—though somebody ought to tell the authors that making the fey Brit a raving Israel-hater was more accurate than they might have guessed."
-remains of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's plane have been found (via TMFTML)
art
-a surprisingly serious conversation on art criticism at TMFTML
-art by J.S. Rossbach (via Mock Turtle Soup)
-art by Jean-Jacques Gaude (via Penny Dreadful)
-art by rabotando (?) (via neurastenia)
-photography by Petr Salek (via cipango)
web and tech
-play the Kinja music digest
-share your Netflix queue
-your phone can alert you when friends are nearby
other
-Gymnast's Skills Save Him in Fourth-Floor Fall
-The Kingdom of Loathing
-Totally Ick.
Psychology Today, drawing on the results of a new survey on shyness, discusses solutions for shyness, and technology's ability to exacerbate it.
The irony of a World Wide Web packed with endless amounts of information is that it can also be isolating. As individuals head to their own favorite bookmarked sites, they cut out all the disagreement of the world and reinforce their own narrow perspective, potentially leading to alienation, disenfranchisement and intolerance for people who are different.In addition, the shy are more vulnerable to instant intimacy because of their lack of social know-how. Normally, relationships progress by way of a reasonably paced flow of self-disclosure that is reciprocal in nature. A disclosure process that moves too quickly--and computer anonymity removes the stigma of getting sexually explicit--doesn't just destroy courtship; it is a reliable sign of maladjustment. Shy people tend either to reveal information about themselves too quickly, or hold back and move too slowly.
(Do the shy always have a lack of "social know-how"? I've encountered many extroverted loners: friendly, empathic, and witty in conversation, but "shy" by self-description. I'm thinking of my mother, a good friend, and that friend's good friend, and some others, almost all women: they're charming in social situations, but rarely enter them, disliking groups or preferring a private or solitary lifestyle. The article's too quick to conflate shyness with slow or stunted social development, and assumes that shyness expresses itself in all new social experiences, rather than expressing itself under specific circumstances or in a person's priorities.)
link via quasimeta
book( re)marks-The Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced; L.A. Times takes home five. The prize for fiction goes to Edward P. Jones's The Known World. And, at About Last Night, Terry comments on the music, nonfiction, and drama prizes.
-The NY Times discusses, and quotes from, from a new play on Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. (HANNAH: You are a sort of murderer, I think. MARTIN: I am a scholar!)
-The James Brothers are really getting around.
-Laura Miller looks at the life of Baudelaire. (When Moore, at Friday's Q & A, said she never missed a class in grad school, I tried to calm myself with thoughts of Baudelaire. It's still remotely possible, after all, to be irresponsible, unproductive, and widely read.)
-Lizzie, aka Our Favorite Hag, reviews Our Savage for The Washington Post.
-Links to excerpts from Never Threaten To Eat Your Co-Workers: Best of Blogs.
-Andrea's Like the Red Panda gets a glowing write-up in People.
-"Memo to film-makers: Painters, composers and sculptors work superbly in movies. Writers don't."
-Amy Poehler and Janeane Garofalo first bonded over their shared dislike for A.M. Homes.
-another online collection of children's books, from 1850 to now
-Books for Soldiers
-How grammatically sound are you? (via TT, who's a "Grammar God")
-Litterati Caption Contest
I'm still going to mention that, Saturday night, I dreamt I was a gay man with a crush on Choire. And that, soon after waking, my subconscious was disabused of that crush by Choire's appearance on VHI's "Hottest Couples." Choire, oh God, called Nick & Jessica "adorable," and I can only hope that this is meant as an apology.
Gibson's 'The Passion' a Hit Among Arabs
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Hanan Nsour, a veiled, 21-year-old Muslim in Jordan, came out of "The Passion of the Christ" in tears and pronounced her verdict: Mel Gibson's crucifixion epic "unmasked the Jews' lies and I hope that everybody, everywhere, turns against the Jews."…Jesus is also a prophet to the Muslims, yet "The Passion" was OK'd by Egypt's censors with no changes. They have not explained why "The Passion" was allowed.
Governments and Islamic clerics are also sending mixed signals.
Kuwait bans any movies depicting any of the prophets recognized by Islam, but one of its top Shiite clerics, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Mehri, has urged an exception for "The Passion" because it "reveals crimes committed by Jews against Christ."
lit links latermusic, tv, film
-Largehearted boy, truly largehearted, has rounded up a great collection of mp3 downloads that includes a hard-to-find Morrissey and Siouxsie Sioux duet.
-Dahlia Lithwick writes on "Average Joe, Adam Returns": "There is, for one thing, an odd National Geographic vibe to the new show, mostly in the resemblance between the cooped-up female contestants and their cousins, the orangutans; both devote relentless hours to fighting and grooming each other."
-Celebs pick their all-time favorite films for The Guardian.
-ABC's adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (a childhood favorite) premieres May 15. (via GirlHacker)
-The Black Table looks back at Kurt Cobain. (My response reading it: something like this.)
tech and computer stuff
-Playfair decodes purchased iTune songs into regular AAC Audio Files. (via boing boing)
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