Lesbian Bed Death and Ayn Rand
Aug. 29th, 2010 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraRTT and I went to see The Kids Are All Right last night – a rather amusing fast-forward of the hippie liaison post-kids where both partners just happen to be women.
The kids use of the collective noun “Moms” made me laugh a lot, as did some of the torturous scenes where the parents attempted to pry information out of the kids, and of course the secret gay, male porn DV; in a couple of scenes Annette Bening bore an uncanny resemblance to my pal Bev T.
But mostly the film was unconvincing – I think because as hard as they tried, there was absolutely no chemistry between the two female leads. Of course capturing lesbian bed death on film is a hard task – you have to somehow capture the original spark and on top of that, the spark’s extinction. But I never for a moment thought I was watching a marriage between two gay women. In fact, the movie really dragged in parts – the two adolescents were totally uninteresting, and perhaps I’m the only person on the face of the planet to find Juliane Moore with her weird timing and that bridgeless nose both space alien-y to look at and a bad actress, but there you have it – I do!
Also reading three books simultaneously:
Heidi Julavits’ wonderful The Uses of Enchantment which I am sipping like cognac.
Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch, which I have not been able to get into even though I’m well past page 100. I persevere because Fingersmith and The Little Stranger were both so brilliant.
Anne Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made. As is so often the case, I find writers’ biographies far more interesting than anything the writers actually write – it’s my peeping through fence holes fixation, I suppose. What I mostly object to in Rand is not her philosophy – with that I merely disagree – but her humorlessness: she’s a propagandist in the grand old style of the Bolsheviks she detested. One cannot but admire Rand’s total self-absorption, of course, and her ability to propel herself forward by sheer force of personality. The only 20th century analog I can think of is Yoko Ono. Still, she didn’t actually do it all by herself – an act of selfless altruism actually defined her life: her family pooled its resources and sent her to the United States.
Most interesting tidbit? Back in Mother Russia, the young Ayn – or Alyssa Rosenbaum as she was known in those days – was best friends with Vladimir Nabokov’s little sister Olga. One longs so for an Objectivist rewrite of Lolita!
The kids use of the collective noun “Moms” made me laugh a lot, as did some of the torturous scenes where the parents attempted to pry information out of the kids, and of course the secret gay, male porn DV; in a couple of scenes Annette Bening bore an uncanny resemblance to my pal Bev T.
But mostly the film was unconvincing – I think because as hard as they tried, there was absolutely no chemistry between the two female leads. Of course capturing lesbian bed death on film is a hard task – you have to somehow capture the original spark and on top of that, the spark’s extinction. But I never for a moment thought I was watching a marriage between two gay women. In fact, the movie really dragged in parts – the two adolescents were totally uninteresting, and perhaps I’m the only person on the face of the planet to find Juliane Moore with her weird timing and that bridgeless nose both space alien-y to look at and a bad actress, but there you have it – I do!
Also reading three books simultaneously:
Heidi Julavits’ wonderful The Uses of Enchantment which I am sipping like cognac.
Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch, which I have not been able to get into even though I’m well past page 100. I persevere because Fingersmith and The Little Stranger were both so brilliant.
Anne Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made. As is so often the case, I find writers’ biographies far more interesting than anything the writers actually write – it’s my peeping through fence holes fixation, I suppose. What I mostly object to in Rand is not her philosophy – with that I merely disagree – but her humorlessness: she’s a propagandist in the grand old style of the Bolsheviks she detested. One cannot but admire Rand’s total self-absorption, of course, and her ability to propel herself forward by sheer force of personality. The only 20th century analog I can think of is Yoko Ono. Still, she didn’t actually do it all by herself – an act of selfless altruism actually defined her life: her family pooled its resources and sent her to the United States.
Most interesting tidbit? Back in Mother Russia, the young Ayn – or Alyssa Rosenbaum as she was known in those days – was best friends with Vladimir Nabokov’s little sister Olga. One longs so for an Objectivist rewrite of Lolita!
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 07:16 am (UTC)****SPOILERS AHEAD****
I sort of agree with your take on "Kids". Julianne Moore came off like an unequivocally straight woman, no chemistry with Annette Bening. Watching her have sex with Mark Ruffalo was reasonably entertaining, as these things go. When, in the third reel, she protested "but I'm gay!" it just rang false.
In fairness, I'm sure that Ms. Cholodenko had her work cut out for her; no doubt lesbian bed death is hard to capture on film. But not as hard as some other things (http://www.theonion.com/articles/male-orgasm-captured-on-film,629/).
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 09:02 pm (UTC)Right. But the point is she was consciously a really, really bad writer of fiction because she saw what she wrote as propaganda.
(Had to be really carefully about my phrasing there. I don't actually know if she could write better if she tried -- her literary idol oddly enough was Victor Hugo who's kind of the King of Turgid Prose.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 11:51 pm (UTC)There is no greater human failing than being humorless!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 04:06 am (UTC)!!!
(I'm speechless.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-31 10:25 am (UTC)