Tony Hannibal Blair
Aug. 3rd, 2006 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThese, it seems, are the last days of Tony Blair. It's looking increasingly likely that he'll be deposed in a bloodless coup this weekend while he's away on holiday in the Caribbean, or toppled at the Labour Party conference next month. Perhaps he'll crusade on for another year and fulfill his ambition to outlast Margaret Thatcher. At any rate, we should be preparing our valedictions now.
I was planning to write a scathing piece about Blair's career today. But, really, what's the point? There's nothing I could say that isn't already being said all over newspapers like The Guardian in op eds, blogs and commentary pieces. So I've decided to stay one step ahead, to do something a bit more original. I'll take the water of Tony Blair's deeds and pour it into an ice tray moulded, not in the shape of his own head, but someone else's; the concrete poet, artist and architect Vito Hannibal Acconci. I call this method Parallel Profiling. (Private property fans, please note: this technique is copyleft. Anyone can use Parallel Profiling without paying for it, as long as they don't charge for it either.)
So, here goes.
Tony Blair: Neither an installation artist nor an architect -- let alone a poet -- Tony Blair did not shoot to fame with an action called "Seedbed" which involved him lying under a raised platform masturbating while broadcasting his sexual fantasies to all comers. Although he erected millions of security cameras around the UK, he never got interested enough in what people do to follow someone around until they passed from public to private space, then type up the results and send them to a friend, or hang around piers, telling a selected stranger "something that I’m ashamed of and that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t tell a soul, something that – if it were made public – could be used against me." On the contrary, Blair always insisted on his own complete rectitude.
Although others filled up hours and hours of video tape with his "conviction" speeches, Tony Blair has signally failed to investigate the medium of video himself, let alone push it into new areas. He hasn't made a single piece in which he, for instance, explores his own naked body or lies back smoking, playing music and addressing viewers as if we're lovers being ardently pursued.
Despite sitting weekly around a big conference table bullying and pontificating, Tony Blair never considered actually designing a table, a radical conference table, for instance, which juts through a window and then eight feet over the street below. He also never made a building which, remarkably, with the swing of a few hatches, can be opened entirely to the sidewalk, becoming a metaphor of transparency (like the Storefront for Art and Architecture on New York's Kenmare Street, currently showing the exhibition Portable).
Vito Acconci: I'll be brief. Vito Acconci hasn't been responsible for the biggest erosion of democratic power -- the power of the judiciary, parliament and the cabinet -- that Britain has ever seen. He hasn't taken a nation to war under completely false pretences. He hasn't declared that he's shifted from being a utilitarian to more of a belief that there's such a thing as "natural law". He isn't Britain's most religious prime minister since Gladstone, "seeking authorisation for war, as well as personal spiritual solace, in the Gospels."
Never having purged a socialist party of all its socialists, Acconci doesn't now insist on seeing every single conflict in the world as a battle between extremists and moderates. He's never compared himself smugly to Jesus by declaring that "Jesus was a modernizer", and he doesn't insist on calling any piece of capital-friendly, clock-turning-back legislation "reform". Acconci hasn't offered "cash for peerages" or become a sort of Hollywood butler to the most right-wing president in American history. Acconci doesn't believe that democracy can be rained down on other countries in the form of heavy munitions, or that the state of Israel is right whatever it does.
Whereas it's possible to see Acconci believing that history can be written in human seed, nobody could accuse him of trying to write it in blood -- and creating, in the process, precisely the sort of "failed states" and hardline Islamist terrorism he claims to deplore. Acconci doesn't then define the resulting anger as an "arc of extremism which must be confronted", hinting that he will attack yet more sovereign states, in defiance of all international law.
Vito Acconci leaves the world better for his actions, Tony Blair leaves it worse. But at least -- any day now -- he leaves.
I was planning to write a scathing piece about Blair's career today. But, really, what's the point? There's nothing I could say that isn't already being said all over newspapers like The Guardian in op eds, blogs and commentary pieces. So I've decided to stay one step ahead, to do something a bit more original. I'll take the water of Tony Blair's deeds and pour it into an ice tray moulded, not in the shape of his own head, but someone else's; the concrete poet, artist and architect Vito Hannibal Acconci. I call this method Parallel Profiling. (Private property fans, please note: this technique is copyleft. Anyone can use Parallel Profiling without paying for it, as long as they don't charge for it either.)
So, here goes.
Tony Blair: Neither an installation artist nor an architect -- let alone a poet -- Tony Blair did not shoot to fame with an action called "Seedbed" which involved him lying under a raised platform masturbating while broadcasting his sexual fantasies to all comers. Although he erected millions of security cameras around the UK, he never got interested enough in what people do to follow someone around until they passed from public to private space, then type up the results and send them to a friend, or hang around piers, telling a selected stranger "something that I’m ashamed of and that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t tell a soul, something that – if it were made public – could be used against me." On the contrary, Blair always insisted on his own complete rectitude.Although others filled up hours and hours of video tape with his "conviction" speeches, Tony Blair has signally failed to investigate the medium of video himself, let alone push it into new areas. He hasn't made a single piece in which he, for instance, explores his own naked body or lies back smoking, playing music and addressing viewers as if we're lovers being ardently pursued.
Despite sitting weekly around a big conference table bullying and pontificating, Tony Blair never considered actually designing a table, a radical conference table, for instance, which juts through a window and then eight feet over the street below. He also never made a building which, remarkably, with the swing of a few hatches, can be opened entirely to the sidewalk, becoming a metaphor of transparency (like the Storefront for Art and Architecture on New York's Kenmare Street, currently showing the exhibition Portable).
Vito Acconci: I'll be brief. Vito Acconci hasn't been responsible for the biggest erosion of democratic power -- the power of the judiciary, parliament and the cabinet -- that Britain has ever seen. He hasn't taken a nation to war under completely false pretences. He hasn't declared that he's shifted from being a utilitarian to more of a belief that there's such a thing as "natural law". He isn't Britain's most religious prime minister since Gladstone, "seeking authorisation for war, as well as personal spiritual solace, in the Gospels."Never having purged a socialist party of all its socialists, Acconci doesn't now insist on seeing every single conflict in the world as a battle between extremists and moderates. He's never compared himself smugly to Jesus by declaring that "Jesus was a modernizer", and he doesn't insist on calling any piece of capital-friendly, clock-turning-back legislation "reform". Acconci hasn't offered "cash for peerages" or become a sort of Hollywood butler to the most right-wing president in American history. Acconci doesn't believe that democracy can be rained down on other countries in the form of heavy munitions, or that the state of Israel is right whatever it does.
Whereas it's possible to see Acconci believing that history can be written in human seed, nobody could accuse him of trying to write it in blood -- and creating, in the process, precisely the sort of "failed states" and hardline Islamist terrorism he claims to deplore. Acconci doesn't then define the resulting anger as an "arc of extremism which must be confronted", hinting that he will attack yet more sovereign states, in defiance of all international law.
Vito Acconci leaves the world better for his actions, Tony Blair leaves it worse. But at least -- any day now -- he leaves.
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Re: Parallel Profiling
Date: 2006-08-03 05:25 pm (UTC)Re: Parallel Profiling
Date: 2006-08-03 05:51 pm (UTC)Re: Parallel Profiling
Date: 2006-08-03 06:44 pm (UTC)Garbo is cool, guttural, and silky. She hides away from the camera a good portion of the time, as if it would burn her, she is lunar. She has the dusky, mineral loneliness of a planet. In her walk, she leans forward with her shoulder, throwing around her lanky bones like a cadaver. But when she falls in love onscreen, you believe it-- her laugh is like a child's, musical, vulnerable and awkward. She changes from glum to excitable in an instant. Somehow you stare at this screen goddess, completely made of silver, and notice that her hair is frizzy, and that by turns she is ugly. She seems lost in a hazy world of her own, not quite able to focus, but turning guilelessly toward love. Today, such qualities are not thought of as sexy. They may even be seen as "un-American"! And Garbo, like my Norwegian grandmother or aunts, possesses a Scandinavian femininity. She was a Swede. The modest masculinity required to do farm chores, coupled with a quiet, poetical pastoralism that relishes white gloves and full dinner service. A serious scowl broken by deep enjoyment of a bawdy joke. A clean earthiness with a metallic aftertaste. The ability, perversely like that of Julie Andrews, to make sentimental cliches new again, like when you are in love.
Joan Crawford could only prove fascinating but shrill in comparison. Undoubtably very pretty, but not beautiful, she seems to avariciously seek the camera. Every take begins with her adjusting her facial expression, as if she is preparing to be seen. From what I've heard of her early life, she had a very hard way to go, and the look of hard ebullience on her face is lovely but desperate. Kind of like when you look at Britney Spears and see that pit of desperation in her eyes, smile as she might. Crawford is brassily American, though she comports herself in the "Continental" way. I would so badly like to have seen her in a quiet moment, smoking a cigarette and chewing gum, her face fallen into a sullen stupor. I can't help but think that her legendary abuse of her adopted daughter came out this desperation, for things to be ideal for a change. She seems like the kind of woman who would affectedly say, "Who? Me?" when told she was pretty. Like the kind of woman who would deftly manipulate men's eyes and pocketbooks, but go home alone because real intimacy would be impossible. In this movie, she cannot manufacture a believable grief response to the death of the man she loves. Dunawaye's portrayal, though artful, foxy, and hard, does seem to be missing this vulnerability.
John Barrymore gives a delightful turn as the admittedly oily thief-slash-Baron, with both women pining for him. Gene Wilder seems to borrow his genteel, bemused air, mascaraed lashes, and weaselly moustache. He professes his love for his only constant companion, a...wait for it... weiner dog. This dog was so adorable, I could see his eyes yearning for Mandy Henderson, circa 2006. He seemed to opine, "If only time's cruel hand had not parted us...".
There is a phenomenon that takes place in movies like these, love at first sight. It could be perceived as incredibly sexist and counter-progressive. But I love it. The man comes along and recognizes some vulnerability in the woman. And something unique. He throws himself in defense of her honor, in exchange for her utmost trust and fidelity. So crazy, it just might work!!
The other thing about movies like these: those doors. I'm talking about inlaid wood-veneer parquet doors, with crazy Cubist patterns. Remember when all rooms had doors between them? Not like your subdivisions with naked drywall portals. And these doors are not your American farmhouse doors: these doors say, "America is the new Paris". These doors come from a time when the Empire State Building would be the terrorist's locus of attention. From a time when people who drove cars everywhere were called "automobile enthusiasts" and wore goggles to do so.
I am an ass
Date: 2006-08-04 02:47 am (UTC)