Wednesday, February 12, 2014

At least I can still have a bee in my bonnet

So I saw the poster for Lars von Trier's new film Nymphomaniac (or is it Nymph()maniac? Or even Nymph({¡})maniac? Very clever) on the wall of a tram. Have you seen it? Here:


Now I'll be honest – I found myself annoyed. I seem to oppose seeing and/or having to look at people coming on my tram wall. Who knew? I've nothing against people coming in general; in fact, I hear it's quite nice (boom boom!).

And let's get one thing straight immediately: I haven't seen the film. I also know nothing whatsoever about the film, except I did look at a few of the posters on google as I was searching for an image to rip for this post. So I'm being a total dilettante, or is it a counter-dilettante, as I'm cultivating a disinterest in something I know nothing about? Whatever, I need to get to the point. What I, to my surprise, found myself annoyed about was how come*, in this day and age, can we have images of men of all manner of ages, shapes and levels of beauty in the throes of the little death, whereas, apparently, to fuck and come women must surely be a) beautiful b) (hence?) able to come without any unsightly facial contortions (can you do that, girls?) c) young, with the notable exceptions of Connie Nielsen, Uma Thurman and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who, in spite of their unfortunate age problem (all three are vaguely my age) manage to look fucking lovely, unmarred by their age – if anything, quite the contrary, growing more gorgeous as the years go bye-bye.

I mean, it's the same as in porn. There are all sorts of guys fucking their balls off over there, on the playground of online adult entertainment, but pretty much the same rule applies there as  on Lars's poster: beautiful women coming "sexily" only, thank you.

I don't know. O tempora, o mores. Or maybe I'm just annoyed as the poster hasn't that much eye-candy for a largely-heterosexually oriented woman? Moreover, such a woman who is both aware of her own growing years having so far not taken away any bit of desire or ability, possibly quite the opposite, and somewhat acutely aware of the fact that her growing years and growing desires and abilities don't necessarily add up to her being accepted as a sexual being.

Ah well. I'm sure I'm not the only one to be going "down with this sort of thing" – but I did think it unprovoked, as it were, by any truck-driving macho female-rights activists, I'd just like to point that out. It can actually also piss off someone who's seen and, so help me, done a fair bit, and not just politically-correct things.

*Pun intended. Boom boom!

6 comments:

Reading the Signs said...

Oh now look - this has completely put me off my stride. I was marching in here all ready to tell you to pull your strumpfen up and get blog-bashing again as I had a sudden insight that if my not blogging might be partly responsible for hastening the coming of the End, then you surely had some responsibility too. And now I find you've gone and put up a rather delightful post so I can't really say anything about that, can I. Anyway, about the little death facial contortions. No, I have *never* seen those reproduced in film. We come and cry prettily innit. I don't feel moved (I'm sure there must be a pun there) to go and see the film, as it happens. In fact the only thing that might get me out right now is the Lego film. If I want more drama than that then all I have to do is look out of the window where even now it's hailing horizontally. Mwah! x

Anna MR said...

Ha-ha, Schwesterleinchen Strumpfen, gotcha. My Strumpfen are, naturally enough, given the context, gossamer-thin with a oo-how-sexy seam up the back (actually, I really love nice underwear, and would only wear such things (I mean, as underwear goes, not that I'd appear in nothing but), if only I could afford to), but firmly up. I have been doing my blogging duties, albeit infrequently, girlfriend, und du hast nicht, let's face it.

So, I hope that leaves you suitably chastised (boom! boom! we're all in support of kink and any other consenting-adults GGG-SSC sexual practices around these parts, really) so that I can lay off that and thank you for coming (yes, boom boom) and for your kind words. I am unlikely to go see the film either, although this is, admittedly, in part to do with the fact that I go see any films incredibly rarely. I've just got out of the habit, which is probably aided by a) there being an awful lot of crap out there, aimed at high-school age American males and b) the cinema corporations charging something like 12€ for the pleasure of seeing these things.

Of course, Lars's film might prove to be a) actually really good, in spite of the poster and b) anyway more adult-oriented (boom boom) than the afore-mentioned teeny-films marketed for all and sundry, with storylines simple enough for a brain-dwarf to follow, and, what's more, predict – to their midgety satisfaction. However, in the days of yore when I did go to the cinema, I did see Breaking the Waves. In fact, I've a feeling I've seen it several times – prolly some of them have been on telly, though I can't understand why I have watched it several times, for I absolutely abhorred the psychological atmosphere and environment it inhabited. There was, in my view, something just not right about it – the sacrificial sexuality of Emily Watson sickened me, although this is not because I wouldn't like Emily. I do. (When I was a bit younger, there were a couple of occasions I was told I look like her, and in some photos, I've admittedly seen a likeness, mostly in how the facial features are placed, if you see what I mean, rather than in actual looks. Well, you've seen me and the placement of my facial features, so you can decide for yourself, but anyway.) Yes, I like Emily well enough, but I've some very serious doubts about whether I like Lars ('s work). Wasn't he the one who recently made the film Antichrist [googles quickly] – yes, it was indeed. Now, as I haven't seen that film either, I can proclaim as broadly and as knowledgeably about that as I can about Nymph(*)maniac (and I do have Antichrist recorded on my digiboksi thing, which one has to have in order to watch TV in Finland, in case you don't know, because all our TV broadcasts are in digital form these days and can only be deciphered into regular images by a digiboksi. Yes verily. And I happen to have a recording variety of digiboksi, which means I can happily never watch any film at all, recording it instead for future watching usage).

(Goddamit, I’d forgotten blogger is a fascist dictatorship, these woeful days, as they limit the amount of characters one’s allowed to use in comments, even in one’s own house. I mean, what’s all that about? Anyway, part two of rant to follow soon, in cinemas near you…)

Anna MR said...

So yes: Antichrist. That's the film where the daughter drowns (or something) as the parents are fucking in the shower, and the mum, racked with grief and guilt, cuts off her clitoris, is it not? Now – this might just be me – but I've a feeling there's something a little bit unusual in Lars's portrayal of women. I mean, a film director can make anything happen to their characters – anything at all. And, well. That's just a particularly ouchy and unpleasant thing to happen/be done to oneself by any character.

And while I'm at this character assassination (for, a little like film directors and their characters, bloggers can say and do whatever they like to just about anybody they like, ha-ha-haa – although I go for good manners and considerate behaviour, with only amusing swearing and no distasteful name-calling, as you know) – after all, Lars is a self-confessed Nazi. I rest my case.

In the throes, as I am, of verbal diarrhoea, I will next grab at your Lego reference and go with the conceptual continuity of pornish stuff and Lego… for, some years ago, when I was still teaching under-7s, I expressed to them my somewhat-disapproving surprise at how they could all watch Star War things which certainly carried a certificate-12 when I was young (they must carry something these days too, although I don't know if they've changed the age limits so that it's 11 and 15 – anyway). The little treasures (and please, I really loved those children very dearly indeed) replied, oh Anna, don't you understand, it's only Lego… so I went home that afternoon, puzzling over O Tempora O Mores big style: "What next? It's only Lego, so kids can watch things full of things otherwise deemed unsuitable for their age group? I mean seriously, what? next? Lego porn? "It's alright, Anna, it's not real people fucking, it's only Lego…?!?"

Obviously, in the days of yore, I would have banned Tom and Jerry, and clearly would also make bosom pals with Mary Whitehouse. Ah well. I'd better go and download some porn to loosen up a little.

(Horizontal hail? Horrid. We are apparently moving into spring here. I have good and reliable info that it's +6 in Moscow, and our weather often comes from there, as do so many other things. So, whaddaya know. We may beat you to spring – but I've a feeling the so-called back-winter will then hit us hard. Expect only mild snowdrifts at summer solstice, all that.)

Big mwah and sorry about the general rantingly-diarrhoetic nature of this reply… it's aka work avoidance, methinks, and besides, it is always highly pleasurable to shoot the shit with you.

x

Reading the Signs said...

Ha ha, darlin :) - this is classy shit and no mistake, so keep, you know, shooting!

Look, I've got to do this (and you) justice and confess that my reasons for not wanting to go and see Lars (as though his Nazi sympathies, and thanks for the timely reminder) were not enough, are simply that I can't/won't go and see anything right now that has anything less than a 100 per cent feelgood substance. Which may well rule out the Lego film too. However worthy, arty or intelligent I have enough shit (and I don't mean yours, obvs) to be dealing with. Mr. S is working his way through Breaking Bad box sets without me. I suppose what I risk is being marooned in Disney Princess territory for all eternity, but at least I still read books - more prepared to give a bit of slack there.

I'm appalled to hear of the blogger fascist dictatorship. We were kind of on to them a while back though, weren't we? They are being ridiculously coy about their house numbers btw - I can just make out the number 34 on your door today.

Anna MR said...

Well, Schwesterlein – "shoot for the shit; even if you miss, you'll still land among some amusement", as an ex-husband almost quoted his mother (incessantly – it was one of his annoying features, although he was a reasonably good man, to quote and quote and quote the same quote, argh, as well as utilise same turns of phrase to the point of causing insanity or, at the very least, moments of mental instability in his spouse. Being "safely ensconced in [e.g. a hotel]" was another one of them; yet another was "hatches, matches and dispatches" [uttered, without failure I may add, upon my reading the births, deaths and marriage announcements pages of my paper, i.e. on a daily basis]. Aaaargh. Squeezing the wrong end of the toothpaste tube is nothing by comparison. I still come up in hives, some seven years later, at these and other phrases in his too-regular repertoire).

But where was I? Yes, shit and shooting and the shooting of the shit. Good shit, man, all of it, apart perhaps from the shooting, when it isn't the shooting of the said shit. Mind you – I believe the Americans use "shoot me, shoot me" as a phrase of some, ahem, sexual connotation – which would make it in keeping with the general come-flavouredness (boom boom) of this post and the comments here writ.

Disney princess territory? Be warned, my dear; there are some distinctly-unfeelgoody things there. It may destabilise you to know, for instance, that Schneewittchen does actually die (of which fate she is brought back by, as I understand, an attack of The Little Death – conceptual continuity, Schwesterlein mein, conceptual continuity), that Dornröschen is in a coma for a century, that Aschenputtel suffers serious domestic bullying in the form of systematic psycho-social and emotional isolation as well as being maltreated and taken advantage of as child labour, which goes right against her human rights as proclaimed by both Article 1 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights ("All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience, and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." Oh, whilst I am quite jaded with regard to the UN in general, I love that phrasing so much it makes me well up every time I read, or, worse, utter it out loud, which I sometimes do repeatedly, just to get a good cry) and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, by the same institution ("The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity.")… the list goes on and on (and I haven't even touched upon Bambi's mum).

…and for crying out loud, I have to send my reply in two parts, again. How is this ever fair? How does it sit with my human rights, as declared by the UN Declaration above referred to? Anyway… more to follow straightaway…

Anna MR said...

As threatened, I am unsilenceable:

The numeric and numeric-pictorial door-evidence of one's not being a robot, incidentally, suddenly changed into two words again, directly after I'd posted my comment on your (hurrah!) new post. I was a bit upset (you know how I fell for those photies big style, when they first appeared, and I still retain the same love for the little peeping-tom windows they give to somebody else's life so everyday they themselves likely never really take note of it), but as the fascist-blog (blogscist? fascblog?) powers that be gave me the delightful combination of Zebediah kensumen, I sort of forgave them. I would simply love to meet Zebediah Kensumen, I would. He sounds cool.

What else? Yes, read. You always will, I somehow feel certain about that. And what's more, keep writing. It's not the speed (we'll leave that stuff to Usain "The Human God" Bolt) or the quantity that counts in these matters. So churn it out, Schwesterlein, at any poet-star snail's pace, as long as you just churn it. Yes verily.

(Incidentally, I am fully aware of the fact that I utilise and re-utilise the same turns of phrase myself. The difference in my re-utilitarianist phraseology, however, is made by the facts that a) they are actually funny and witty and quirky and all-round good and b) they are not annoying. Yes verily.)

Can you tell I'm doing my work-avoidance duties, by the way? Too enjoyable here, just way too enjoyable.

Bis weiter, du Schönes Mädchen of a Prinzessin.

x