This looks very good to me,

Even though I also am willing to acknowledge it could be really awful as well.  And, gosh, if it does not seem to dovetail exactly with my belief about the Disco Sucks movement.  The Disco Sucks folks were merely some of the loudest jerks of the Trad White Male Power Structure in the midst of their Backlash moment -- all this happening around the time of Carter's Iran tragedy, and Reagan's rise to power.  This Backlash took on the normal forms of American backlashes; it was misogynistic, homophobic, and blatantly racist.

I have been telling the Wife, and any one else willing to listen, this for years now.  (Although, it is going to take a lot of convincing for me to believe that Saturday Night Fever is some kind of Feminist Manifesto.)

Plus, there is just a magical personal numerology thing for me at work.  My key numbers are 68 (the year I was born), 77 (a year I associate as the last truly great year, for reasons I will discuss in a moment), and 9 (John Lennon, Mike Modano, and, sure enough, my age in 1977.)

I could be completely wrong, but I see 1977 as an absolutely exquisite wonderful year for our culture, and as also a sort of anti 1968, one of the most tumultuous years for Western Culture in the Twentieth Century.  Women were riding as high as they ever had before, Gays were enjoying a massive liberation party, and African Americans were dominating the music charts.  (Beware: Those were some massive generalizations I just down laid down there.  But, we are talking about my rosy colored feelings and impressions.) On top of all that, in 1977 you also had the greatest Situationist art project in history, the Sex Pistols, careening and wrecking their way through America's Deep South, offering their own personal critique of Western Capitalism at the same time.

Of course, the party has always got to end, and this one ended horribly.  Reagan aligns himself with the new South based GOP base, and the Moral Majority, and gets elected.  One month later John Lennon is murdered in front of his wife, in front of his own home.  The official new GOP's War on Women™ gets instituted and trademarked, and soon after that we start hearing this thing about the new Gay Cancer.  In a lot of ways, I was born at a really bad time.  Nothing I can do about that, right?

Anyhoo, I am v excited about the film.  At the v least it might spark some insightful conversations and arguments, yes?

Mwah, 
Everybody have a fantastic disco Friday!

New Whit Stillman film, his first

Since The Last Days of Disco, which was fourteen years ago, comes out right around my birthday this year.  Hoo-ray!

It is called Damsels in Distress and is part musical, believe it or not.  No Chris Eigeman or Taylor Nicols in it, though.  Looks pretty much like all young unknowns.  "Chad" from In the Loop and the sultry, surly Aubrey Plaza (Scott Pilgrim, Parks and Recreation) make appearances.  The trailer is below:

Meanwhile, I loaned out Barcelona to my friend, Meghan, and a bunch of other great films, so Renee and I scratched our Whit Stillman itch the other night by watching Metropolitan again.  It is such a sweet, wonderful, darling motion picture, with a true old-school classical structure full of ingenues, heroes and cads.  And so much great dialogue.  Of course, I identify with Tom Townsend.  I am Tom Townsend.  I quit reading novels ages ago.  I prefer to read literary criticism.  I walk everywhere or take public transportation.  I actually know who Charles Fourier is and used to talk at great length about him with my splendid vegan, Socialist, wannabe ELF member, now author and legitimate environmental protector, Douglas Bevington.  Also, like Tom Townsend, for all my revolutionary rhetoric I would be just as vulnerable to the seduction of the Manhattan UHB-scene, eager to belong to their clique, their world.  But unlike Tom Townsend I most definitely do not have bright red hair.

"It has a lining."



AH