I sure am talking about the movie Female Trouble by John Waters (1974). This movie strangely appealed to me for the wise subject matter—womanhood that is prone to be criminalized—and its handle. The approach is anyhow feminist one. The life of heterosexual is not worth living, indeed, I can’t agree more. I have lived to claim it really is not worth living, therefore I am a sexual outlaw as well. I just felt like going back to this movie for the interview of the actor who played the hair salon owner’s wife that I happened to read (second time) in a back issue of a mag. According to the interview, the whole movie crew was loaded with speed, as you could tell by the film during the whole time they were in the production process to the level that I got worried by reading the article even if the concern is obviously overdue. If I summarize the interview, it is immensely important to 1) find like minded people and 2) cooperate with them especially if you are an outsider. See who were with all the great outsider directors such as Fassbinder, Waters etc. Someone like Divine. Well, do you have one?

The most SEXUALLY CANDIDPERFORMANCE OF MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL’S career— NEWSDAY

The movie Sherry Baby passes the compulsory level of realism if often succumbed to cheesiness. To name an example of the very cheesy moment about the film, it might be rather about the architecture the movie has than any scene that did not go very well. This movie has another structure of the victimology narrative. The primary reason that the protagonist has her sad drug history and die hard heroine addiction is because she was a victim of INCEST with her father. But this forceful or lazy reasoning just ruined the movie’s real feature; its plausibility. Now with the template of INCEST, we attribute every challenge Sherry the protagonist faces to her Incestuous relationship with her father. If you examine the narrative from that angle, there is no room left for the audience like to sympathize or relate to. To my knowledge, people can get severely addicted to any of those hard drugs once they are exposed to the regular use. There is no point of blaming one’s family when they hit the point of ‘no return’ such as Sherry did, which actually caused her the time she did in prison and some more, she is released now on parole. I was more intrigued to see those obvious scum bags she always ends up getting involved when she really did not need to. To me, that is the most horrendous aspect of the hard drugs do to people’s lives. In that sense, this movie was, indeed, frank and CANDID, as Newsday went as I put in the beginning.

The most visceral scene in this movie, though, was that Sherry had to stay in the awful room in a motel in NJ while her father lives in such a mansion and offering strangely no help. This was the realism that I was talking about earlier where my attention got totally captivated. Sherry runs through the whole neighborhood barefoot after re-encountering her father’s indifferent and continual sexual contact. All of those mansions unfolded while she was running barefoot because with those high heels that are supposed to make her look she would never escape. But she has to run away just as if she was the perpetrator despite the fact her father was raping her as a kid.

I just noticed that his movie has fundamentally the same nature of another ‘fresh out of prison’ themed movie, ”Clean” except that the protagonist in that film played by Maggy Chan had nothing to do with victimology.

Gyllenhaal’s somehow defected facial feature glitters in this raw and dark set even if she after all did not seem to fit this role.  There might have been another actor who could have made this production more plausible and interesting. Or her nudity might champion the talk in the industry: she bares her breast quite frequently in this production and I bet that is what the Newsday quote in the beginning pompously referred. I wonder what it means when it says “CANDID” , like it has got the authority to decide what is real and what is not, what is more honest and what is less honeset, what is what. Who are you to determine the reality like that? She is a good actor because she makes audiences think beyond the very prevalent cookie cutter aesthetic standard in Hollywood, usually not because she gives in what is expected. But she bared her breasts to defy the standard. She deserves our applaud for her defiance, independence and guts. But that does not make the production in its utmost condition. It sure is interesting to see someone like Gyllenhaal get naked and humiliated but that does not mean it is real. It is raw, but that is as good as it gets. But I can see you start ordering the DVD or putting it into your order list before you barely finish reading the entry. You perv.

I finally got a long meditated but unaccomplished mission out of my way so I feel very complete. The mission was to finish Courtney Eldridge’s collection Unkempt, including “The Former World Record Holder Settles Down,” which was marked as one of a few literally works that were inspired by Annabelle Chong’s world record of having intercourse with 211 men in ten hours.

The story by Eldridge The Former World Record Holder…was not very satisfactory rendition to me. But then, I still wanted to give this story some credits for what it was trying to depict and to do even some more. Still, her supposedly signature style of ‘languid tongue’ often ran out of focus even I fully understood that she chose the style to express something she could not have otherwise. The story sure did touch upon subjects that were all interesting, and worthwhile, if only the narrative delved into them just deeper. Such as her ‘clean and good natured’ husband’s cruel and voyeuristic view on whatever he does not identify with, therefore foreign to himself. In other words, his cruel and crude objectification of such things as Hasidic/orthodox dating, bestiality porn, women and ultimately his own wife gradually began terrorizing her and she could not help examining her own safety in the domain where was supposed to be safe for her. Wait! This could have been indeed a grandiose achievement if the author handled all of them in more careful fashion with more patience and some craft; all of these elements were interesting only they were connected to each other and articulated enough to readers, and the point is that they were not. All were raised, and dropped like the author forgot or lost interest in cooking after all were skinned and ready to be thrown in a pot. Her writing is often introduced as the ’stream of consciousness’ style, but it still appears rather a bit sloppy and has shortcomings than fully incorporating the ‘channeling’ as she schemed. As I read on, I felt like editing this text furiously with red ink, and the whole text could have been one third or half of what is in print as it is today if I really did. Even just to create the impression of a woman talking on top of her head off, and odds are the voice hits the unconscious, therefore uncanny area of wisdom we seldom channel into unless getting high, or accessible only randomly and unpredictable, and even if that was what this author aimed, there were too many redundant and unnecessary words and sentences that could really discourage readers before they would get any important area of real wisdom. 

I was not thrilled after I had learned the structure of the story and its principle, but I read it until the end merely for a sake of fulfillment of my curiosity. I really wanted to know how and where the author would land on, and ultimately, conclude what were all brought up. And I got really disappointed by the forceful approach of psychoanalytical summary the author lazily employed. The narrator would rather not appropriate her life as the Electra complex story, which ended up lame. When it comes to her mentioning her father out of the blue, it became too much of a departure rather than any comic relief as the author seemed to wish out of the desperation of having to end the story, and I wonder if the author knew it really ruined the thrill of the argument. Wasn’t this protagonist initially claiming that she was not a trauma driven (former) sexwroker, unlike most people want to see her and any other sexworking girls? She said she was not. So I kept my hope up to hear something, or anything really, BETTER, just to be betrayed by the author’s sloppiness. At least, this might be a crucial part once you are aspired to portray a sexworker who is lucid to defy all odds, and the author just drops the case and makes the protagonist an easy psyche entry level of Electra complex-ed former sexworker in denial. This seemed to be the violation of a contract.

But still, I am glad, maybe in a bit twisted way, that the author wrote this and I got to read it, just like I found someone who witnessed and examined what was unfolded by Chong other than me.

And, by the way, this author’s description about the chronological development of events, or each one’s record, was a bit screwed up. The narrator, or the protagonist, Chris could not have gotten to know Jasmine St. Claire before Chong. But the story tells her story as if she knew St. Claire’s incident first, and later she was informed by her (Chris) husband that her own record was broken by Chong. I think it should have been fact checked even though this was a fictional work. Because the author still owes her production of the story to the real events, and of course, to Chong/Grace Queg’s real life, and this author is not an exception at all. No one can be an exception when seeing and being seen. How to ’see’ with respect is the ultimate and urgent mission for female writers to accomplish. The reason that I say so will be explained soon.

This movie had been in my ‘to see’ list forever. That I had it there explains that I was interested in it but was never actually interested enough to bring  myself any chance to see it. The feigned interest was caused by reasons below.

1) People talk so highly of it as well as of this production to have made John Cusac to be some sort of an attainable sex symbol. And I did not get it. He always seemed to be helplessly unattractive, and painful to watch to me. I thought that I might understand the trick if I saw this film, or at least what they were talking about.

2) The movie is almost a decade ago, and I still remember when it came out. That had of the TV commercial that was highly active and I guess mostly for Jack Black’s coma daughter comment. Back in the days, he was still an underrecognized actor who strangely had a loud presence and sparks. Who knew he would later become of one of those US male figures who not only established the physically out of league passable but also totally the ligitimate, which was obviously a gospel to those who are struggling with the anonimity that is usually associated with the chybbiness and the height like Black, or Phillip Seymore Hoffman. Note that two of them are unusually talented BTW. But you can still get more than a glimpse of this highly unusual achievement of Black.

3) This movie is in a way established as some sort of cult (rrreally?) by now 2008.

OK, so I devoured my whole day to finish this, and I have to admit that it was not easy. This movie was shit, not because this was all about too self-absorbed, unattractive, boring, white heterosexual male’s personal account of his break up and his belated self awakening, which were all true in this production and I would say too boring to dedicate my two hours, but because this movie was designed to redeem not only a mediocre and unattractive guy but to support this sort of male’s ego trip, or really his berated ethics to treat his partner and attempt to justify his obviously wrong doing to his now ‘fatal exgirlfriend’, who he could not belittle more before she really left him. How can we trust someone who obviously wrongs such an important partner, easily dismisses the effect of the acts on her and gets so agitated when she got fed up. The sequence of events seemed just natural so he deserves some whining and suffering but he all did those just his petty ego and bruises he had on it. Do we really give a damn? Really. But what this story does in the whole movie was miraculous: to deny and makes an excuse of his literally debased moral, or his deplorable credibility, and claims all to be his charm. To make this happen, the narrative acquires a nice enough opponent’s redemption, or support, to undo all of his wrong deeds. And guess what? He would all get it from this fatal ex-girlfriend, who eventually moved back in with Cusack mostly because she was ‘tired of not being with him’ as if nothing really had happened. This was quite a fantasy, almost like a hetero male fairy tale, especially when you already know what this man did to her; he had spelt with someone else when she was pregnant? What? Besides he still owed her four grands and would not give it back to her because he would not manage, besides this woman was a lawyer and obviously way more socially accomplished than this good for nothing record shop owner. And this movie kept on saying, “This guy deserves the sympathy on top of a second chance, because he is someone who still has some charm although he has got a lot of flaws. But hey, isn’t redemption what we need to get a nice relationship back?” I just got very sick in the end.

Or was this movie memorable for creating some space to exercise some discourse on ‘men’s condition’? If so, I understand how much ‘women’ support this unnecessary degradation as well: although this is a total male fantasy shit just as 007 has been, it is established its position due to the female support. Or should I interpret it as how much those women are suffering for shortage of partners?

Come to think of it, this is not a kind of movie that I usually see, so I was more indignant than I usually become for the afterthought. Still, this really seems to reflect how deplorable look people have, regardless of men or women, about relationships and inter-personal dynamics when this sort of production not only passed but also is actually commemorated as something nice. Are people all right? Or am I the only too critical one?

http://www.venuszine.com/articles/art_and_culture/reads/748/dao_strom

I also wanted to talk to you about how their Vietnamese backgrounds shape these different women and about their relationships with men. Also about how these women are very conscious of how they look to others. Particularly how Mary, in The Gentle Order of Boys and Girls, for example, negotiates the world differently from Leena, the prostitute-turned-Texas housewife.
I don’t know if it’s a Vietnamese thing, even though they are pretty image-conscious. I’m also fascinated with the prostitute archetype. It’s like that idea of using looks and using sexuality to maneuver through the world. I was kind of fascinated by that. The Vietnamese thing is more like: I wanted each of them to have a displaced background, and these are stories and experiences that I know of, so they needed to come from somewhere else. I don’t know, maybe at some point I’ll stop writing about Vietnamese people. At the same time I didn’t want that to be what the stories were about. I wanted them to be about women. I think I’m interested in different parts of American culture. I think being here and playing roots music is a way of trying to get inside something that wasn’t accessible to me naturally.

—Dao Strom interview in Venuszine

I read Dao Strom’s the gentle order of girls and boys but I never knew this author was also a musician. This time, I took a listen to her music and I was really blown away by her. Her writing did impress me for her very unexpected take on the same old identity politics and the bad history, but this time, I was really thrown perhaps by Strom’s musical background. The voicing technique and singing style she has are obviously Texan, which I usually do not appreciate. But the way she employs them is just like a breath of fresh air, and she reinvented the style in her own way.

It becomes so important when it comes to music where the musician’s origin is. Dao is an Angelina, not even close to Texas, and transplanted herself to Texas for her music development’s sake. It is also very important how the musician defies to one’s origin to explore, invent and push the limit to originate one’s own music. Oh, and she was originally from Saigon, I almost forgot. So imagine how important it is for a theorist as myself to discover the hybrid like Dao Strom. It means  so much to encounter something/someone that makes me forget where they came from and resist the musical and cultural pedegree, which is still dominant in any cultural ’scene’. But I search the moment when an expression occasionally transcends for its universality, and dissimilate rather than assimilate, differentiate rather than familiarize cliched representations in the US context. Dao Strom’sstunning presence as well as her expression to state here is a new voice worth listening to, and all the rest, including her race, or her then-war torn birthplace and its sad history with US, comes way after to register. This is the idyosyncratic and ideal time lag that I have long awaited for, and now we hear it coming.

It is not everything to be involved in that manner —as today’s title goes—, my current boyfriend persuades.

This is another make up after the third official attempt to break off. I just needed to be alone to work and focus, and hey, the word that I hate the most is boyfriend. It does not cause anything but harm, harm and loss.

What else can there be, then, I say.

Oh, it is irresistible if someone like you faces another that way to love. But it would not last, he laments. I just want to stay with you.

And I just love the combat with a man that I love. Isn’t that what love is all about? Both ends burning to the end, so fast and fire up each other like there is no tomorrow nor future.

—How have you been all this time?

—Oh, I have been OK (untrue) as usual. And you?

—So am I, but with you, life is just great.

Another thing that I could point out in the movie The World of Suzie Wong was the cast: the actor of Suzie Wong role Nancy Kwan was a Eurasian—the mix of Chinese and English—who was on the side of VERY EURO looks but  was put so much emphasis on being Asian. This might be the very early case of casting ‘real’ Asian in Hollywood context. Prior to this point, movies set in the Eastern Asian block such as The Quiet American or Love is a splendid thing employed simply Western or American actresses and made believe—passed them— just as they were Asians. This was how Asian faces were introduced to American coding method of minorities physical features. In other words, it seemed almost impossible for American audience to recognize and accept Asian faces as the legitimate images cast upon the Hollywood screen, so they had to conceal them and substituted by something remotely hinting the real Asians’ physical features such as dark hair but never really Asian. This was their most compromise made in order not to disturb the American social order based upon the very physical and aesthetic standard. In other words, that was the norm widely prevailed and supported racism as the primary social order in the US.

This serves us a very example of how subjective all the representation can be regardless of man made or real people filming. Besides, it explains how difficult it is to introduce ‘new images’ especially those who were already stigmatized and inscribed as something negative. Asian bodies were initially introduced to the occidental psyche as ‘dead bodies’ or ‘insects to be terminated’ due to the wars that all involved genocide. How to change the currency was a mission for all creators who handled Asian images in any favorable way rather than an exploitative fashion.

We can never see beyond what we expect to see and what is expected to be seen unless we make any deliberate effort to read the code and go beyond the political and also unconscious manipulation.

In the old time, ‘mirror’ was a very valuable item and accessible only for those who could afford it. The trick behind it was that it was taxed so heavily that it was ciculated only among the aristocracy. I am talking about English society after they had established the foundation of the very rigid class system that became the driving force and the social order later. But I suppose other societies than English one had more or less the same kind of system that governed people’s sense of aesthetic standards, methods to elaborate fashion and ultimately the sense of identities.

So you can still derive some useful tip from the old custom. If you want to control the general public in the society, you have to limit their access to their own self images, which would inevitably cause their search for their own identities and control over it. So restrict anything that help them to search and establish their identity. If you stop them to have any power, which would naturally progress into the problematic power and class struggle, you just don’t let them have rights to determine who they are. You have to keep on imposing your idea of who they are on them rather than letting them decide who and what they are. No images of themselves. The easy access to all the easy technology? NO! Cell phone camera? No way! Self portrait? Condemn it!

So the key was to restrict their access to any method to examine what they appeared to others’ eyes. If they could not see themselves, or did not have the slightest ideas about what they looked like, you could determine what they were so easily and manipulate, impose, or control the general public, you name it. The point was how to limit their access to mirrors by using the social system based upon the economical states they were living in. Thus, certain freedom such as to know and determine one’s identity was completely limited unless they had money to burn just to know what they looked like back in those days before people invented the technique of photograph.

So I guess regular people were more counting on each other—their peers— to know what they looked like as the aesthetic sensor and to determine the standard of beauty on masses. Therefore I bet there was no inner beauty, no ‘identity politics’ and it was totally up to what the privileged saw, perceived and wanted to do with images they withheld. To say the least how extravagant it might have been to spend time on accentuating what looked good and how to make it better, so on.

I often consider the old custom and seemingly how die hard it is even in the city: stranger guys come talk to me saying how beautiful or all those remarks to exercise what only the ruling class had as their rights. I know what I look like and often have to wonder what they try to achieve by doing this. As if to say they are entitled to decide the standard of beauty and sex appeal simply because they are men.

I had been prepared enough, so I was not offended, unlike other Asian American who are relatively political conscious but not enough to use the material to theorise. One thing that obviously occurred to me was how this movie resembled to The Quiet American. Once you recognized it, you can’t really tear yourself off from the whole architecture that almost appears to be a parodied response to the Anti-American nature the former had had and its political connotation. I have not read the original novel, but this movie apparently exploits the original essence incorporated by a British author, just exactly like Graham Greene’s novel and the Hollywood movie based upon it, I highly suppose it was written in the pretext Graham Greene’s work unfolded, and odds are the author of Suzie Wong, Mason was very conscious to follow, mimic and develop the precedent that represented the case study of interracialpolitics and strong crticism against America, the new colonizer in the era.

The movie Suzie Wongwas made into the very Hollywood no brainer style in terms of transforming the whole idea into Americanism from rather Anti-American world view as the novel connoted. All the more, that is how I detect the obvious resemblance between two and the Hollywood’s manneristic method to defend the American society in a very bland, no brainer vocabularies.

There were some scenes that I still could not help cringing even after some inhumane effort to let them all pass, for I was watching it for a research sake, not for any entertainment purpose. One of them was that the movie repeatedly portrays how much the idea Suzie and other hookers had about men women dynamics looked like they were calling for violence against them from men, and those women had the perverse pleasure out of getting beaten up. This was, too much, and found it really offensive, given it was promoting the groundless preconception of Asian Women as submissive piece of meat, you can do just as anything you want. Let’s organize a rally to protest in Hollywood, if not too late.

I have been on the research of ‘trafficker words’ on the net for a while. The biggest one that I acknowledged was INCEST, as you see, so far. It is such a relief to see ‘Asian Face’ as a competitor to the big word INCEST. So what is next?