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You and me together, fighting for our love
My brain feels more and more like a blank screen every day—the kind belonging to an old cathode-ray television, where the program snaps off with a diminishing zap. I dreamed last night of reading and discussing a famous novel retelling Ariadne and Theseus in a historical context, rather like Mary Renault's The King Must Die (1958), except that Ariadne was a trans woman. It was nothing especially unusual in the archaeological record of Minoan civilization in my dream.
I am reading this article about the virility of fascism and all I can think is that the first time I saw a photograph of Richard Spencer—the one featured in the profile by Mother Jones, reproduced in the article—"dapper" was one of the very last words to come to my mind. He was not remarkably beautiful. He did not wear his suit and tie with a particular grace. Perhaps he has a magnetism in action that only comes out in voice and movement, but since his most famous public appearance to date involves some Hitler saluting (that he now desires to retcon as "fun and exuberance," as if it is somehow excusable to throw the most unmistakable gesture of Nazi allegiance since 1926 if you do it out of sheer buoyant enthusiasm, like spontaneously embracing a stranger in a crowd rather than telling a racist joke at a party to gauge what else the guests will let you get away with), I suspect I am already immune to it. I am used to disagreeing with both pop culture and people I know about the respective beauty of all kinds of public figures; I can't even remember how old I was the first time one of my peers thought it was weird and alien for me not to have a crush on an actor everyone else had unanimously declared hot. My interest in people's bodies follows as it always has from my interest in their selves, so if you are a neo-Nazi, everything below the waist is kaput. Nonetheless, it remains curious to me that even if I look at Spencer aesthetically, I can't see him as anything special. He does not even trip my "interesting face" meter. What are journalists seeing when they talk about his physical appeal? Is it literally just a combination of whiteness, maleness, and semi-symmetrical features? This is the kind of question that makes me feel alien to ask, but so does watching a lot of human behavior; this just more than most.
I finally got hold of the soundtrack for Pride (2014) and now I can't get several hits of the '80's out of my head. Michael Cisco enthusiastically recommended me Frankie Goes to Hollywood at Readercon this summer and he was right.
I am reading this article about the virility of fascism and all I can think is that the first time I saw a photograph of Richard Spencer—the one featured in the profile by Mother Jones, reproduced in the article—"dapper" was one of the very last words to come to my mind. He was not remarkably beautiful. He did not wear his suit and tie with a particular grace. Perhaps he has a magnetism in action that only comes out in voice and movement, but since his most famous public appearance to date involves some Hitler saluting (that he now desires to retcon as "fun and exuberance," as if it is somehow excusable to throw the most unmistakable gesture of Nazi allegiance since 1926 if you do it out of sheer buoyant enthusiasm, like spontaneously embracing a stranger in a crowd rather than telling a racist joke at a party to gauge what else the guests will let you get away with), I suspect I am already immune to it. I am used to disagreeing with both pop culture and people I know about the respective beauty of all kinds of public figures; I can't even remember how old I was the first time one of my peers thought it was weird and alien for me not to have a crush on an actor everyone else had unanimously declared hot. My interest in people's bodies follows as it always has from my interest in their selves, so if you are a neo-Nazi, everything below the waist is kaput. Nonetheless, it remains curious to me that even if I look at Spencer aesthetically, I can't see him as anything special. He does not even trip my "interesting face" meter. What are journalists seeing when they talk about his physical appeal? Is it literally just a combination of whiteness, maleness, and semi-symmetrical features? This is the kind of question that makes me feel alien to ask, but so does watching a lot of human behavior; this just more than most.
I finally got hold of the soundtrack for Pride (2014) and now I can't get several hits of the '80's out of my head. Michael Cisco enthusiastically recommended me Frankie Goes to Hollywood at Readercon this summer and he was right.
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I have to say, that's a very low bar. [edit] This came up on LJ as well. I think what I keep barking my mental shins on is the fact that we have known for ages that people do not always fit the archetypes of their behavior; I don't understand why anyone is still surprised to the point of needing to write weirdly admiring profiles about the contradiction. Am I upset that neo-Nazis are now so conventionally well groomed that journalists will take them more seriously than when they were obviously a kind of counterculture? Yes, but I am more surprised at the journalists than the neo-Nazis!
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It might be? I also do not find arrogance an attractive quality, so it's difficult for me to tell if it's affecting others.
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I agree that your second point is perhaps the more important here, but seriously on your first.
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* And are English, which is why the authentic t-shirts say FRANKIE SAY. Only knock-offs say FRANKIE SAYS. This trivia has been relevant to no one for thirty years.
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I keep telling people that I have holes in what I know. I have not heard of most pop music from the '80's or even music that was pop-adjacent while also being deeply weird, as are most of the songs on the Pride soundtrack. That decade in my iTunes is mostly punk, post-punk, or folk, with a smattering of classical, musicals, and movie soundtracks, plus some stuff that I am not entirely sure how to classify, but it was not generally made of charting singles. I am very happy to find out about most of these people now.
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I have no idea, to be honest. I've got a ton of Jethro Tull; I've heard a non-negligible amount of Magma, but don't actually own any of their music; I bounced severely off Procol Harum the few times an effort was made to introduce me to their music. My uncle was the producer for all of Kansas' records in the '70's, which made the time my middle school chorus sang an SATB arrangement of "Dust in the Wind" extremely surreal. Since my self-assessment of knowledge in a field is almost always worse than the reality, I suspect there are any number of musicians or bands whom I like—or with whose work I am at least familiar—who would be classifiable as prog rock, I just haven't thought of them that way.
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Thanks!
I am always open to music recommendations; I might just not follow seriously up on something immediately.
appearances
At the attractive end of the scale, I was disappointed that People didn't choose Lin Manuel Miranda as the world's most beautiful celebrity, but I do think I'd like him as a person, in addition to finding him pretty, so maybe I'm not objectifying him in that way.
Re: appearances
Affect matters. Microexpressions matter. I know narcissists and sociopaths are supposed to have supernatural powers of charm, but the few true examples I have ever met personally of people who used other people—who could not see other people as real, or whose definition of "real" depended on "like me" or "useful to me"—turned me off amazingly and immediately. Maybe I just got lucky and met clumsy examples of the species, but I think it's a real factor. Nothing to do with their faces, everything to do with a sudden feeling of off. (And it doesn't trip for people whose affect display is non-normative because of something like autism or depression or stress, so I trust it.) The way people responded positively to Donald Trump confused and disturbed me from the start, because even minus the content of his speeches, everything about his delivery and his public presentation—voice, gesture, expression, stance—connoted danger to me. He looked and sounded wildly unsafe.
dapper (which I associate with the late father of a friend of mine)
Cool. What was he like?
It isn't just their politics that are making me feel this way. I am disgusted by Paul Ryan, but can see that people might find him attractive. Most of the people Trump has proposed for cabinet posts are entirely inappropriate, but I don't mind how they look.
That makes sense to me.
At the attractive end of the scale, I was disappointed that People didn't choose Lin Manuel Miranda as the world's most beautiful celebrity, but I do think I'd like him as a person, in addition to finding him pretty, so maybe I'm not objectifying him in that way.
I'm pretty sure that doesn't invalidate your feeling that he's beautiful!
Re: appearances
Re: appearances
I like your theory and think it would produce quality film entertainment and less global hororr.
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Yes. Your assessment is correct. That's exactly what they're seeing. That, plus they're not used to seeing young-ish men in suits, even ugly suits (that tweed jacket with that tie, what was he thinking). And also, they're accepting whatever vomit he wants to feed them. "I know he must be a truly great and good man, for he told me so himself."
There's also macho wish-fulfillment. I'm psychoanalyzing but I think I'm right: reporters are looking at Baby Oswald Moseley and seeing a white heteronormative masculine etc. body, which constitutes, by circular logic, a powerful figure because it is white het., etc. and wearing a suit as the Trappings of Power. The writers are secretly wanting to look just like him and have the corresponding liberty to be as crappy as he is and never have to answer to anybody.
If I hadn't been certain before, I would have become so when I read this quote that Jezebel pulls from The Guardian:
The almost entirely male audience cheered when Spencer made his statement about women’s desire for a “strong man”.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAaaauuuuuughhh.
This is Gaston explaining to Belle that she finds his ultra-violent, animal-slaughtering, bullying, self-serving, free-will-denying identity INCREDIBLY HOT. Also see every smug male celebrity who has ever explained that all women are naturally submissive and want to be dominated by a muscle-bound hero.
I feel sorry for the young women who are going to have to live in a world full of boys who have lapped this shit up. I feel sorry for Baby Moseley's wife, if he's married, which I don't even want to know enough about him to check if he is. I am direly amused by the writer reaching many decades back to a time when Anti-Semitic Trash Fire was... less unattractive than he is now, in order to call him "handsome." It's strange seeing this kind of focus on male bodies as objects of desire and veneration, but I guess as long as the bodies are macho, society as a whole accepts it. If we were talking about men as seen as objects of desire by women, or by other men, or by folks who are neither, for that matter, it would be a different story and the general press would be all EW FEMME COOTIES.
All the adulation plus the word "virility" is making me think of Ravenous, of course, where Ives describes his cannibalism experiences and ends with "A certain... virility," and a big reminiscent smile. That's Boyd's moment to back away with his stomach heaving, and I think it's mine too. Can we just make it a Rule of Life that when an individual wants to tell you about his own "virility" that we should all accept that this is code for "I eat people" and back away fast? If we could teach people that in general, I think everyone would be better off.
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Then they need higher standards!
That, plus they're not used to seeing young-ish men in suits, even ugly suits (that tweed jacket with that tie, what was he thinking).
I'm glad it's not just me. That combination was not my definition of well-dressed. David the projectionist could rock that tie with the right suit (and shirt, and shoes, and hat, and pocket square—can you be dapper if you didn't at least enter the building with a hat?) and my husband could wear it terribly for comic effect. Neither is taking place in that photo.
The writers are secretly wanting to look just like him and have the corresponding liberty to be as crappy as he is and never have to answer to anybody.
It is then even more distressing that at least one of the profiles cited by Jezebel was written by a woman, because it means that the viewpoint is contagious regardless of actual feelings—a version of the default male gaze. At least, I would prefer to believe that she did not actually find Spencer himself enthralling, but just got caught by the event horizon of these fascinated tropes.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAaaauuuuuughhh.
Amen.
I feel sorry for the young women who are going to have to live in a world full of boys who have lapped this shit up.
I'm not thrilled about having to live in it myself! Overheard recently while walking up Holland Street, one college-age-looking young man to another: "So naturally they settle for nerdy guys . . ." It was not possible for me to construe anything from this fragment but some garbage jock-nerd alpha-beta theorizing about what women "really" want and how to insert your unwanted male self into the middle of it. But I agree with you that it will be worse for the generations that grow up with this sort of cultural gaslighting normalized. I'm left thinking of Boyd McDonald: "There is no personal reason why I should care what today's heterosexual men are like, but for the sake of women, I wish their men could be a little less shitty."
It's strange seeing this kind of focus on male bodies as objects of desire and veneration, but I guess as long as the bodies are macho, society as a whole accepts it. If we were talking about men as seen as objects of desire by women, or by other men, or by folks who are neither, for that matter, it would be a different story and the general press would be all EW FEMME COOTIES.
Agreed. It is the straight white cis male body in the subject position, always; everyone else can only look up at it, worshipfully. Oh, man, now I want to re-read Ballard's "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968). I bet he would feel terrible about turning out to be a predictive science fiction writer after all.
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I agree that part of it may be the novelty of seeing a man under sixty in something other than casual wear; and that that's probably the most charitable theory.
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People say Jidenna why you dressin' so classic?
Don't want my best-dressed day in a casket!
Seriously, I'll take a copper-toned, red-haired multiracial rapper with a pomaded beard wearing Nat King Cole loafers over any one of these White Power mothereffers. That's a man in a suit!
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That is in all ways a wonderful video.
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Thank you; he is dapper.
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That sounds difficult, but feels like it cannot be an inevitable Venn diagram. I hope you have access to people with the body type but not the bad logic and misogyny.
but I can usually at least identify mainstream handsomeness, and Spencer is fairly neutral, going by that photo.
I am not good at identifying mainstream handsomeness, so I appreciate the data point!
I agree that part of it may be the novelty of seeing a man under sixty in something other than casual wear; and that that's probably the most charitable theory.
Especially since it's been less and less of a novelty in recent years, as three-piece suits come back into fashion.
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That is almost literally the reaction I had to finally seeing Ronald Reagan as an actor—the boyish all-American stereotype, but why do I want to look at that?
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I can only assume so. It's impossible for me to find someone with such dead, vacant eyes appealing.
"Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood is one of my favorite over-the-top dance hits.
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True that.
"Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood is one of my favorite over-the-top dance hits.
Specifically Michael recommended the video, but the song is also a legitimate earworm. Bronski Beat's "Why?" has been the dominant note for the last couple of days, but "Relax" is currently alternating with Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" for challenger and every now and then Grace Jones' "Pull Up to the Bumper" or Pete Shelley's "Homosapien" puts its oar in and it turns out that I like Kirsty MacColl's "A New England" better than Billy Bragg's original, which was heretofore the only version I knew. Being someone who doesn't actually enjoy dancing in club or party settings for a variety of reasons, I don't have a lot of experience with dance music and mostly associate it with songs I tried to avoid in high school in the '90's, but some of this stuff is ridiculous and I mean that in the best way. It probably does not hurt that, due to the film's themes, much of the music chosen for its soundtrack is queer and political as well as catchy, but I am enjoying the catchiness!
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I'm a big Kirsty MacColl fan.
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I am absolutely against judging people by their suaveness or otherwise in dress, or by their body shape or grooming, but words have meanings, and the meaning of dapper isn't that. Mother Jones, check out John Steed.
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Thank you.
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Right! And it is not like America even in recent history has any shortage of people who commit horrific acts and then everyone stands around saying, "But he looked like such a nice boy!" Or did the banality of evil also age out of historical memory in the last few years?