RuPaul's Drag Race

RuPaul’s Drag Race is a schlocky, tacky, cheap production of reality television. With that said, it is... well, faaaaabulous. RuPaul first gained fame as a drag queen and club performer in the early 1990s and subsequently went on to appear in television and films. His importance in the realm of drag performance is paramount and his mainstream accessibility is not to be understated. He has made himself a paragon for any hopefuls to come and that is the basis of his drag race, contestants compete with each other in sort of a attempt to knock the rhinestone tiara from his head. 

RuPaul’s Drag Race follows a vein similar to shows like Project Runway and Top Chef in that it is a reality show where more is required of the participant. A strong stomach for beetles and bile or a penchant for vulgarity is not enough. And more than sheer nerve is needed, though it helps to have plenty of that too. Mostly what seems to be asked of contestants is talent, ingenuity and work ethic. They are expected to design and sew most of they’re own costumes, do their own make-up and are usually put through the ringer with some sort of physical exertion whether it be a dance routine or otherwise. And of course, in the final showdown every week, the grown men competing to be “America’s Next Drag Superstar” must sashay down the runway in their stilettos.

What’s interesting about the show is for the majority of it, the contestants are out of their glitzy garb and the men, most of them solidly built, are carefully calculating and plotting on how they can lose all effects of masculinity and be the most feminine each week. Preconceived notions of masculinity aren’t even notions in this arena and it’s expected that these men will drop any remnants of that as easily and effortlessly as they slip on a wig. There’s a good heaping of camp that goes with the drag, and naturally, sequins are de rigueur,  but each of the men seem to be paying a serious salute and a honorable homage to the women who have inspired them. 

It’s hard to talk seriously about something which holds no reverence for anything except maybe glamour, nonetheless RuPaul’s Drag Race, for all it’s fun and frivolity, is doing something serious. It’s very existing is permission for others to do the same thing, to redefine what masculinity or femininity is, to rediscover it on their own terms and to celebrate it. And while, this viewer may not be slipping on a wig anytime soon, perhaps I could put a little more bass in my walk...

Beatrice Straight in "Network" (1976)

      In 1976, Faye Dunaway won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the film, Network. She was the forerunner to win that year and no one was surprised by her score. The winner for Best Supporting Actress that year was also in Network, a woman named Beatrice Straight, who’s win was much less expected than Dunaway’s. Straight was 62 years old and had spent most of her acting career on the New York stage. Before Network she had appeared in a handful of films and done a smattering of TV work. One can imagine she must have felt a little out of her element at the glitzy awards ceremony in Los Angeles, a very dark horse she was, indeed.
     Straight’s performance in Network is of a peculiar achievement. At five minutes and forty seconds, it is the shortest performance ever to garner a win of the celebrated Oscar. Straight played the wife of a television executive, who has been thrown over for a younger woman after twenty-five years of marriage. Straight worked on the film for three days and aside from her critical scene when the affair is revealed to her, she only appears in a few, quiet shots waking up and starting her day before her husband.
     As Louise (Straight’s character) listens to her husband calmly explain to her that he’s having an affair, it’s easy to see the sensibility that has pervaded through their twenty-five years of marriage. Straight is remarkable in how she conveys the character’s desperate rationality. Louise is white-knuckling her collectedness, asking questions like, “How long has it been going on?” and “Do you love her?” With each of her husband’s answers she loses a little more control of her practiced and balanced resolve. When he has repeated twice that he is “infatuated” with this younger woman, and then proceeds to say he is “obsessed,” Straight unleashes herself completely.
     Most incredible about the woman’s hysterics is the intelligence of their temper. It’s never ridiculous or absurd, she realizes that this is no small indiscretion and she is livid about it. She’s livid that after twenty-five years, another woman will be reaping the benefit of what she’s sowed. Credit has to be given to screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, but Straight’s delivery is no slouch. She says to him, burning raw, “So this is your great, winter romance, isn’t it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that’s what’s left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion and I get the dotage?”
     The superior quality in Straight’s performance is how quickly and naturally she reels the character in. This intensity is not what their marriage has been. Perhaps it has been lacking in all out heat, but still, they have been warm companions. She gives up her rage and tells him simply, “I hurt.” They begin to talk and she listens as a best friend would to someone talking about their new love. At the end of Louise’s tour de force as a wife and Straight’s tour de force as an actress, she hugs him and says, “I won’t give you up easily...but I think perhaps it is better if you move out.” Within this startling range that Straight gives us in under three minutes is amazing conceivability.
     As day broke over Hollywood on the morning after the 1976 Academy Awards, Faye Dunaway’s fiancee, photographer, Terry O’Neill, shot a fabulous image of her. In the photo, Dunaway lounges poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel, sleepless and hung over in a white silk bath robe and heels, with a cup of coffee and her Best Actress statuette next to her, newspapers filled with headlines of her victory scattered around her feet. Trying to imagine what Beatrice Straight’s morning after looked like, one can guess that it probably wasn’t quite so glamorous, nonetheless that same feeling of glorified achievement was just as richly deserved

Artwork of Bahraini Protestors

The country of Bahrain is a small, island country located to the east of Saudi Arabia. The country is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. Like much of the rest of the Middle East, Bahrain is finding itself in severe upheaval and turmoil right now. Following the lead of other neighboring countries, major protests against the government and leaders have taken place. The Pearl Roundabout became the center for all activity regarding the protests, including being the main site for demonstrations. What has also developed at the Roundabout because of all this Arabian sturm und drang, is a significant amount of opposition art.

The art displayed along the sides of the Roundabout have run the gamut from graffiti to banners to mere photographs of protestors lying dead. A lot of this artwork has been sloppily done. If one were to look at any of these creations under a separate set of circumstances, it would be easy to dismiss it with the same sort of carelessness that it looks like it was made under. However, the hasted effect is precisely what gives all of this work resonance.

One of the more intriguing pieces created was the front of a Sanyo air conditioner with a paper print out taped to it, reading, “We won’t move even if summer comes. We have the air conditioners ready.” It’s shoddy and looks like a grade school art project, and it’s commanding and incredibly inspiring. These people will not be moved, not even by the charring weather of their country’s summer, and they’re letting their government know in a form with a little style and imagination.

Despite the lack of finesse in any of these pieces, it’s the idea of creativity coming out under intense pressure that makes it so powerful. The fact that they are not trained in a particular method of creation gives their work even more clout. These are not artists making poetic statements about injustice in the world; these are real people expressing their rage and defiance in a new form. The people of Bahrain, with the government trying to silence them in the most extreme and literal way, have let their voices be heard through art.

The government of Bahrain has torn down the Roundabout, promising instead to put in traffic lights as a more effective way of passing along the road. It also seems to be a more effective way of traveling without spreading the message of the protestors. The Bahrainis may have lost a place to hang their work but it is doubtful that those who have the will to create can be stopped from doing it. Roundabout or not, there is hope for them and their air conditioners.

Madame Paul Escudier (Louise Lefevre), 1882 by John Singer Sargent

The Art Institute of Chicago has three examples of John Singer Sargent’s portraiture from the turn of the twentieth century.  The first is Mrs. George Swinton (Elizabeth Ebsworth), who is more imposing than her wall-mate on the right, Mrs. Charles Gifford Dyer (Mary Anthony), yet not as compelling as who hangs on her left, Madame Paul Escudier (Louise Lefevre). Sargent also painted landscapes and vignettes, some of which also hang in the Institute, but he made his bread and butter with portraits of new and more seasoned wealth. His work outside of profiles is good and it speaks of an able impressionist but none draw the viewer in in the same way that his celebrated portraits do. The vivid and melancholic painting of Paul Escudier’s wife is much more intriguing than the rest.

            One common thread in all of Sargent’s representations of the wives of the haute bourgeoisie is the singular clarity and explicitness of their faces. All around the subject is shadowy fuzz. And with this portrait it’s easy to get lost in the strokes of red, white, brown and midnight green, but the face is what keeps you from drowning. It’s almost as if Sargent used a camera when it came to this woman’s face. Madame Escudier's stare burns the viewer and it’s impossible to take this in without wondering about her life. The writer, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, wrote of Sargent that he “offered a superficial elegance and flattering but shallow likeness… his fluent use of light and color often deteriorated into empty display.” Wolff has a point and it must have been a very valid one in Sargent’s time when women themselves were only for display, but the lens of history sometimes illuminates the seemingly shallow. What might appear as empty display in 1882 conveys a deeper truth about the role of women to us in 2011, something Sargent very well may have been aware of from the insight his title gives us, her married name in terms of the husband with her first and maiden name in parentheses. The former Louise Lefevre drills her way out of her canvas into the viewer. The subject of this portrait is blistering and keenly aware despite her foggy surroundings.

            Edith Wharton, who lived at the same time as Sargent and fictionally chronicled the same sort of woman he painted, said of him that she couldn’t think of any other artist who had the technique of genius but lacked the temperament of one. One could surmise that she knew Sargent socially and found him without ego, but perhaps she speaks to his talent. Sargent’s depiction of Madame Escudier is not blatant or overt, after all Madame and Monsieur were expected to pay Sargent for his work and supposedly hang it in their home. Sargent seems to have been very careful about how he revealed her authenticity.  If he does lack the temperament of a genius, all the better, for where Wharton and others spelled it all out, Sargent left it to the subtlety of his strokes.

Calder's 'Flamingo' in Federal Plaza

     I can only begin to discuss public art by admitting to a bias and because of that I have to ask you to be indulgent of my use of the first person and a little bragging. My hometown, Des Moines, Iowa, is not known for much. Des Moines generally comes to the forefront of America’s collective brain when national political caucuses become the only newsworthy item. The city usually leaves the country’s consciousness approximately two minutes after the results are announced. Des Moines likes it that way, but what most of America misses about Des Moines is the art located in the city. The Des Moines art museum was designed by the architect, I.M. Pei, who also designed the entrance to the Louvre in Paris. Public art, especially in the downtown area, is ubiquitous. The sculpture garden includes pieces by Louise Bourgeois and William de Koonig. John Pappajohn, a local financier and art collector, who has funded a great deal of the city’s art expansion, is known for having sculptures in his front yard, which change at his whim. The city is consistently acknowledged as a smaller scale metropolis with an enviable art scene. With all that said, I would not suggest that Chicago’s public art is pitiable (although I could be tempted to), but I would say that for a city of its size it lags behind in one aspect of culture, per capita anyway, when compared to my supposed miniscule hamlet of a hometown. 
     The Calder ‘Flamingo’ sculpture in the Federal Plaza of downtown Chicago has always reminded me of a sculpture in Des Moines that is similar in scale. The ‘Flamingo,’ which was unveiled in 1974, is less intimidating in its size than one would imagine. It only reaches to the seventh story of its neighbor, the Federal Building. The sculpture is industrial and sharp, jagging out in unexpected places and depending on one’s view, possibly unseen places. Still, it is warm in spite of its streamlined look and surroundings.
     There isn’t much about the piece that initially calls to mind a flamingo. The shade is too vivid and the shape doesn’t speak of it literally. Observing the piece, ‘Insect’ seems to be a more fitting name, but the contours and lines are so flamingoesque. All at once blunt and rounded, and despite it’s shade of fantasy it never inspires flight, firmly grounded, like the bird.

     One wonders how many people gave pause to take it all in in 1974 or even 1975. Did locals dismiss it so easily in 1980? People don’t really see the ‘Flamingo’ with purpose and those who observe it every day see it as part of the landscape. Perhaps that’s what Calder intended. With its location, one would assume, its most frequent viewers would be those who only see the sharp, scarlet edges out of the corner of their eye. At times, Chicago seems perpetually gray and this blast of coloring and structure is refreshing when noticed.

Cruel Intentions (Remake of Dangerous Liaisons)

            Choderlos de Laclos’ epistolary novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, has been told in a myriad of different cultures and settings. The most linear adaptation is the 1988 Stephen Frears’ film, Dangerous Liaisons, but the story of deception and seduction is probably best known as being set on the cusp of the millennium in New York City under the name of Cruel Intentions. Technically, Cruel Intentions is adapted only from the book but there are many pieces of dialogue that seem to be lifted directly from Christopher Hampton’s Dangerous Liaisons screenplay and the 1999 film is nonetheless, a remake.

            The original story concerns two wealthy, vengeful aristocrats, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont who simper and scheme in18^th century France partly for pleasure, partly for power and partly out of plain boredom. In short, they conspire, and largely succeed in destroying the reputations of two women; a married woman considered to be beyond moral reproach, Madame de Tourvel and a young girl recently engaged, Mademoiselle de Volanges. The calculated events that revoke Tourvel's and Volanges' virtue are orchestrated by the malevolent Merteuil. Valmont enters the picture as the seducer of both women. Beyond that there is plenty of intrigue and high drama trivialities that make up the intricacies in the tale of deceit and defeat.

            Cruel Intentions takes all the details, names included, and plants them amongst the upper echelon of a set of prep school seniors in New York society present day. Changes come to the story in mostly original forms. The director, Roger Kumble, who also adapted the screenplay, did a superb job of updating the story with use of technology and placing some of the original story’s specifics and minutia into modern forms of communication. All of this was done effortlessly and the film manages all of the particulars with ease. All around, the film is a remarkable translation and the integrity of the dishonorable characters holds up.

            The film, in many ways, works very well and tells of all the devious sexual manipulations in a way that is just as fascinating present day as it must have been when the novel debuted in 1782. Largely, the problem with the film is that it lacks the bite of the truer adaptation, Dangerous Liaisons. The devastation of the victims is much more apparent when placed in 18^th century France. Place whatever social commentary on it that you like but the fact of the matter is that women’s virtue is not given as much importance and regard in modern day America. Reputations do not carry the same weight they once did and a loss of one is not the tragedy it once was. The stakes of Cruel Intentions are simply not as high, because of that, it loses the genuinely sweet malice of the story. Watching the machinations carried out by a set of teenagers only reminds the audience that these games are better left to the grown-ups. Baudelaire said when Les Liaisons Dangereuses was first published that it, “burns like ice.” Where Dangerous Liaisons burns, Cruel Intentions only singes. 

The Wire and Detroit 1-8-7

            A comparison between The Wire and Detroit 1-8-7 is really case of apples and oranges. Indeed, a case of apples and oranges where the apple is in season and the orange has long past being slightly rotten so instead of comparing perhaps it’s best to analyze them individually. These two shows are chronicling similar fictitious arrangements of cops and bad guys, but in drastically different manners. Let’s start with the apple.

            The Wire has probably been described as ‘gritty’ so often now that it’s a cliché of the show but it’s the most apt description of the show, from the storylines and writing to the filming and cinematography, it is all gritty. The Wire is a show that holds you on the edge of your seat ready to jump from whatever happens in the next frame. It holds the viewer in this pose not so much from awe-inspiring storylines or intelligent performances but more from the fearful realism it all depicts. Viewers should be forewarned at the start of each show that they could possibly get a few worry lines or develop premature crows feet from the wincing this show produces. It is, like they say, a show unlike any other on television and all that sort of thing and it is also, like they say, a show that boldly broke the mold of the typical cop show and all that sort of thing too. But what this show does best is what television is meant to do, take the viewer out of their own living room into a reality completely different than their own. The Wire is a show that is legitimately rife with verism and for those who like that sort of thing, it’s the best of its kind, but not for the faint of heart.

            Detroit 1-8-7 is this season’s answer from ABC to the network executive’s question, “How about a cop show?” The show follows the usual self-contained formula of these shows. In these shows drama launches quickly and carries the audience through a series of cliffhangers between commercials. The characters in these old chestnuts are nameless, archetypical bodies performing their functions. Detroit 1-8-7 follows this formula and it is a formula that many people could easily tire of after seeing it done dozens of times. And then there are others who don’t tire of it and will, if ABC hopes and prays enough, fill their rating quota. There is actually nothing truly wrong with this hackneyed form. It can provide intrigue and interest to the viewer just enough to distract them but not enough that they can’t carry on afterwards. And there are shows that utilize the form exceptionally well, such as Law & Order: SVU, unfortunately Detroit 1-8-7 does not make use of it that well.  But all is not lost for those appreciative viewers of this form, for if it does not make it past the network cuts, there will surely be another facsimile to take its place next season.