![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Your beautiful pen, take the cap off
Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book (1996) is the natural progression from Prospero's Books (1991), one of the most thoroughly erotic movies I have ever seen, and I would have a lot more to say about it if I hadn't found out, shortly after ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks and I finished watching and gaudior came home, that their moving company had turned themselves into fail.
At some point in the night, I remember saying toreversepolarity, "Today has been brought to you by the numbers duct tape, boxes, and the letter what the fuck."
The move will happen and my cousins are amazing, but I stand by the description.
rushthatspeaks and I finished watching and gaudior came home, that their moving company had turned themselves into fail.At some point in the night, I remember saying to
reversepolarity, "Today has been brought to you by the numbers duct tape, boxes, and the letter what the fuck."The move will happen and my cousins are amazing, but I stand by the description.
no subject
As for Pillow Book. It had a very strong effect on me--I loved it, but it upset me so profoundly I can't even think about it without having nightmares. Usually, I'm not such a delicate flower, but that one got me, for some reason, in a place that not even the poetry of Romeo & Juliet can touch.
no subject
I am not going to attempt to argue you out of an emotional reaction to a piece of art, because that would be patently stupid, but I find it interesting (in the genuine sense, not the carefully worded eyebrow raise) that you and
* Past a couple of scenes which I imagine are intended to be: the blackmail of Nagiko's father, the publisher's writing on twelve-year-old Nagiko, the book of Jerome in the publisher's possession. Pretty much any action the publisher takes is disturbing, really. But he's not the whole story.
no subject
I want to see The Draftsman's Contract again, though. I saw the severely cut version they released in the theatres, and loved even that.
no subject
Understood. I had been waiting for somebody to be turned into a literal book since about the fifteen-minute mark, so the skinning was not a shock—and I would not have found it at all distasteful if it had been Nagiko making the book.
I saw the severely cut version they released in the theatres, and loved even that.
I didn't know there was a severely cut version. I wonder which one I saw last fall at the Brattle.
no subject
no subject
I don't know about that: I know some non-white people, and some non-cisgendered non-heteronormative people, who live in Texas. They often seem pretty happy to me. I visited Texas in highschool, and am pretty sure I was not secretly miserable there, though I did get a miserable sunburn.
I hear that Texans have even produced non-cisgendered, non-white, non-heteronormative persons on their very own, and not all of them get exported.
Rush and Gaudior don't have to leave their souls at the border crossing, and shouldn't, and aren't planning on it--even though there's a myth that non-normative people are somehow required to, or that their souls will be leeched away gradually by normativity. From talking to them early on about my own concerns about their relocation, I came to realized that they knew before I did that they wouldn't, couldn't, and shouldn't give that up. It made me a lot more comfortable with their decision to move. (Even though I miss them more than I can say).
I understand that you are probably worried for your friends during their logistically tough move to what will be a different kind of life in a different culture, but I feel that your comment plays directly into the myth that non-normative people should not go to where they want to go, and should not do what they want to do, unless the normative people there already approve of their existence.
If we wait for that universal approval, we'll be waiting forever. If we go and do what we need to do with our lives, despite our fears and despite normativity, we might be able to have a life to live. (Which presents the possibility of letting us change at least ourselves.)
If they do wind up being unhappy there, for whatever reason, there are 49 other states--even the rest of the world. If Rush & Gaudior themselves, after moving, declare normative Texan misery and flee, I'm going to respect that: but I think it's dangerous to suggest that they ought to do so pre-emptively, simply because they're moving to a place that supposedly buys into a normative cultural myth.
no subject
no subject
Of course normative cultural myth contributes to normative cultural reality (now, and in the past and future). There are ways in which that is true in Texas. There are ways in which that is true in Massachusetts. There are ways in which that is true in Saskatchewan and Tokyo and Kampala.
And one of the ways in which that normative cultural myth is currently contributing to cultural reality in Texas is the state of queer folks there: they aren't going to have those rights you listed, plus a lot of others you didn't list. The recently released Texas GOP platform is terrifying. The school curriculum does its best to eliminate anybody who's not a dead white male. I never meant to suggest that those problems weren't real or extant, or serious, because they are, very.
But I feel that when one says, "only normative people can be happy there," that's outright repeating the pre-existing cultural normative myth--which reinforces the destructive *reality* of normativity that that myth creates. It's the same as saying "non-normative people can't be happy there," which erases the actual experiences of non-normative people who already live happily there. It makes the already-difficult work of those working to change cultural perceptions and actuality of uniform normalcy even harder ("you only get to have a Gay-Straight Alliance if you call it Diversity Club, because we don't want trouble.")
Some non-normative people may choose to live in places where their personal rights are restricted explicitly so that they can help change the perceptions of what normalcy is in that place.
Don't you think that the first step in choosing to live in a place with such normative realities is coming to peace with the idea that those realities exist, that you personally will be fighting a battle against them, and that that's more than ok, but may be in fact part of what you want to do with your life in that place?
All I'm saying is: they aren't unaware of the legal, moral, or ethical problems, either their extent or their seriousness. They've had a year to think about them and research the issues while they prepared to move. And it seems like they've chosen to move there anyway.
They are even planning on being happy, but you are insisting that there is no possible way that this choice that they have made could let them do that. When you say that, you are not only reinforcing the idea that no one who is non-normative could possibly be happy in that space (an assertion that real people would disagree with), but reinforcing the idea that non-normative people shouldn't ever want to be happy in that space, and must be mad for thinking that they had a shot at being happy there--that it's a total write-off.
That, of course, is exactly what the normative people who are trying to kick folks like you and I and Rush and Gaudior out of places like Texas want us to think--that we have no ability, and certainly shouldn't have the desire, to be happy living our lives anywhere we please. I'm not going to let a bunch of close-minded bigots tell you, me and my friends that we shouldn't have the ability, right, or desire to make medical decisions, share property, have custody, or get married ALSO tell us that we don't have the ability, right or desire to be happy anywhere we damn well please. If I'm not letting them tell me that, I'm sure as hell not letting my friends tell me that.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I loved The Pillow Book when I saw it ten+ years ago (it seems like it must have been that long ago at least) -- I suddenly realized that I cannot recall the occasion, but the film remains vivid. I only saw Prospero's Books for the first time a few months ago, but I can well imagine that they form a strong pair and progression. The ending of the later made of the two is so perfectly apt and yet so horrific that it seemed to simultaneously ruin what went before but also fulfill it, so that everything wonderful about the film was really only possible because of how it ended, but now having written that I'm thinking I'm forgetting or misremembering too much and simply must watch it again, watch both of them again.
no subject
I believe the removal of stuff has been accomplished. At least, nobody's called to tell me it suddenly hasn't.
The ending of the later made of the two is so perfectly apt and yet so horrific that it seemed to simultaneously ruin what went before but also fulfill it, so that everything wonderful about the film was really only possible because of how it ended, but now having written that I'm thinking I'm forgetting or misremembering too much and simply must watch it again, watch both of them again.
I do not know how much discussion you wish before the re-watch, then, but I must tell you that for me, the horrific portion of The Pillow Book was not the ending.
no subject
Anyhow, I just got to googling and I see that it's now available to download, at Digital Classics. I definitely recommend it, if you're tracing the Greenaway trajectory. Maybe a treat for after the moving crisis?
no subject
I must see this. Thank you.
Maybe a treat for after the moving crisis?
Hmm.
no subject
That was a beautiful film. If you ever feel like writing about it, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts.
no subject
no subject
When I've slept, I'll see what I can do.
no subject
no subject
I'll come visit wherever you are; we will find a tape in the last local video store and watch it.
I love it to bits and am super-glad that you got to see it before Rush & Co. left.
I understand why Peter Greenaway hadn't particularly been on my radar—he's barely on DVD and almost never re-released even in arthouse theaters—but I'm still surprised that it took me until the last few months to see Prospero's Books and The Pillow Book; they are so clearly a way of putting the world together I needed.
no subject
no subject
Thank you: I am honored by that. I think I would have remembered something of Prospero's Books if I had seen it before, like the first few minutes of A Canterbury Tale that were instantly, unplaceably familiar when I saw them on TCM. What it mostly felt like instead were things I have so often dreamed.
(The late-night PBS WTF would be Fool's Fire (1992), which I meant to borrow on DVD from