In Fashion, Veritas

Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, has been mocked and reviled for many reasons: her supposed impossible standards and bitchiness, as sent up so well in The Devil Wears Prada; her thinness, her lovelife, her liking for socialites, her crush on Roger Federer -- with which I have a sneaking sympathy.

I also have sympathy with something else she's said, which drew if not outright mockery at least an air of faint bemusement and is-she-serious. She said that if you looked through the pages of fashion, they would tell you what was going on in the world just as surely as if you looked through the back issues of, say, the NY Times.

It might not always be completely clear. But you can see the military influence in past seasons of fashion, new materials that mean new technologies or new imports or new concerns with organics, patterns of price and consumption revealing market fluctuation. Nostalgic/ironic Soviet kitsch is big now in Russia. And didn't I just post about greenness? Today I bought a little Christmas present for a friend, a purse/wallet made out of the Times and covered with clear plastic. So with eco-chic, we've reached a point at which looking through fashion also means looking through the Times. Prescient, isn't she?

Clash of the Titans

It was a long and convoluted thought process that put it into my head, but one of my favorite old Hollywood movies is Becket (1954). And it's a rare person who can even discuss this movie with me; come to think of it, I'm not sure I have ever found anyone else who has seen this movie. Maybe I'm not mentioning it at the right times.

It is a very faithful adaptation of a play by the great French playwright Jean Anouilh, which is in its turn an extravagantly unfaithful take on the historical events leading up to Thomas Becket's death and canonization. Anthony Quinn and Laurence Olivier starred in its English-language premiere; in the film, Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton light up the English countryside for miles around, helped by John Gielgud. Two of the greatest screen performances ever, as far as I'm concerned. Both were nominated for Best Actor and common talk at that time was that they split the vote and allowed Rex Harrison to sneak through for My Fair Lady.

Why hasn't it lasted? Oh, a lot of reasons: big period drama, next to no romance, very talky, very heavy on the discussions of religion, and the sheer damnable opacity of Becket's shift from Crown to Church. Not for everyone.

There are also some nice stories behind the making of the film. O'Toole and Burton apparently drank each other under the table regularly during filming, and they also supposedly switched roles right before filming started. Burton is so fantastic as the aggressive, wenching Henry VIII in Anne of a Thousand Days that you can well imagine him as a great Henry II, but O'Toole's high-strung explosiveness and raw neediness are almost painful to watch. Much as I love Burton and his legendary voice, this is probably O'Toole's show.

Begrudging applause

As you all know, I have been missing my late-night TV; in grad school, I got in the habit of taking my laptop to the futon with me and doing some light work while watching late-night.

After a hiatus, in which I watched movies or simply stayed at my desk, I went back to the futon and discovered that NBC has taken the inspired route of airing reruns of Leno -- oh, but not recent reruns. They've gone so far back into the vault that it's like watching a bemusing time capsule. Last night, Julia Roberts was on... to promote Pelican Brief. Jay's hair was gray and he was asking her all about Lyle Lovett, who she had just married.

I have to admit that they're fascinating to watch to see how fast our pop-cultural framework changes, something that always trips me up with my students. This is the Harry Potter generation. Just think, in a few short years we're going to be teaching students who grew up obsessed with Hannah Montana.

It ain't easy being...

Self-denying?

Today I was chatting with a friend while happily honing his knives and listening to his dog's tag clink as it pattered around his feet, and I started yammering on about this article I had read in the NY Times about Chicago's new green alleys. The green alleys are made to drain rainwater and runoff back down into groundwater, and they will also keep temperatures more temperate, care for your children and do your taxes. This is the usual sense of green.

Then I suddenly realized I had just read another such green article in the Times, about green holiday gift-giving. This was a more peculiar article, because it started out with what you might expect: people giving homemade gifts from recycled objects, light bulbs, etc. But then it became an anti-capitalist mantra, with people volunteering for charity rather than giving gifts.

That happens to be green. But it's something that people used to do all the time and never think of calling green. It was more like "getting back the true holiday spirit" or "being unselfish" or thinking of the starving children in Africa while pushing your broccoli around your plate. So I ask you, a la Carrie Bradshaw, since when has green meant good?

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for greenness, and have always conserved everything. I got in a very long and complicated discussion about showering once in college. I grew up turning off the shower water while soaping; that is, you turn it on, wet your hair, turn it off, shampoo. Turn it on, rinse, turn it off, soap, turn it on, get out. Let me tell you right now, this takes some fortitude when your parents also believe strongly in conserving the central heating.

My friend's roommate from Slovakia had apparently grown up the same way, and somehow his roommate had found out and they had started talking about it -- perhaps his roommate had heard him. That's how my roommate at math camp found out about my showering habits, because she would keep thinking I was done with a very quick shower and then hear the water come back on.

A long discussion ensued; many found this exceedingly strange, but it's the same logic as turning off the tap while you brush the teeth. I decided that those who grew up where hot water took more work than just turning the dial were a whole lot more conservationist! Conserving work, coal, wood, whatever. It wasn't green, just practical.

In other words, being green now just means being not so luxuriously consumerist as most middle-class Americans take for granted. And therefore, with our true Puritan roots coming out, that self-denial must be good.

As my brain rots...

I really am going to have to take a break that involves reading a more serious novel at some point. Somehow, reading for teaching doesn't help. I learned when I was consulting that if I don't read seriously for too long, I start feeling weird, literally as if my brain needs flossing.

One of my friends has been recommending Jasper Fforde for a while, and I got him to read on the elliptical. I started with the first one, The Eyre Affair. As you can tell, loaded with literary allusions, seeing as it's about a female literary detective who tracks down forgers, scammers, and literary characters come to life. Kind of a sci-fi meets female James Bond meets Haroun and the Sea of Stories meets romance. It's pretty good, but moving a bit slowly mid-book as it seeks to entangle you in the terribly clever intricacies of its plot. I don't know if I'll keep going on the series.

But I also happened upon some Sherlock Holmes stories. I've read a lot of these Doyle followers, and these are decidedly the best I've ever found. Donald Thomas is the author, and he's written many books, including a couple of Holmeses.

Princess fever

On an unrelated note, I read a Newsweek article about Disney's skillful marketing of its Princesses and how they're planning huge adult-targeted product lines: princess towels, princess weddings, princess honeymoons... And incidentally, Pocahontas and Mulan, who are practically action heroes compared to the others and are of course two of very few minorities, are not usually included -- no dresses, no crowns means no marketing.

Given this nausea-inducing deification of girlie values, I suddenly feel bad about wanting to see Enchanted. Netflix it is -- then I feel a little less like I'm giving the studios big money.

And by renting a DVD, I'll be giving even less than $.04 to the writers.

The great jukebox in the sky

I have finally concluded my tour of Hugh Jackman's career highlights with a bootleg DVD of the Broadway musical The Boy From Oz. It's all Peter Allen's music, linked together by the warhorse device of a jukebox musical that tells of his showbiz rise and death. I didn't realize how many of his songs I knew, like "The best that you can do is fall in love," "Everything old is new again," and "I Honestly Love You." Unfortunately, if I tell you that this last is sung by a dead character dressed all in white, that pretty much sums up the problems of this musical.

A lousy, lousy book and poor characterization, leading to Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli being practically caricatures. Some of the most boring group choreography I've ever seen; I've seen better with non-dancers bobbing and kneeling in timed patterns. A "hidden" childhood trauma that "accounts" for Peter's emotional stuntedness. And a big splashy Radio Music Hall performance screaming out for a huge production number inexplicably done with next to no flair, though considering the rotten choreography, I can't imagine it could have gotten a lot better.

Against this, you have the songs themselves, some very good singers in the supporting cast, including a truly charming, cartwheeling, tap-dancing little boy playing young Peter (and probably getting beaten up on the playground, poor kid). And, of course, you have Hugh Jackman's sheer star power. He is a very good singer, a little uneven. He's at his best in the big power ballads and splashy numbers. Moves well, not exactly Gene Kelly. Who cares? You can't look away -- which is why the musical got by, since he's on stage most of the time.

Listening to the dead people sing, in two numbers. You would think they would have known to pull that stupid stunt once at most. One is Hugh Jackman's partner, who sings "I Honestly Love You" to him after he dies of AIDS. Could he not have sung it on his deathbed? I ask for so little.

And yes, two men kiss, Peter's called a fag (in a loving way, kind of, by his blustering manager), he rubs all up against some one-night-stand lover. I do wonder if any families or conservatives ever walked out! I remember hearing tales of people walking out of Rent.

This musical lasted a year on Broadway and closed when Jackman's contract was up, of course. He wanted it to go on and apparently particularly wanted Ewan McGregor to take his place. McGregor is another one of these multi-talented men I hate to love, and he's done a musical in the West End (and Moulin Rouge). He and Robbie Williams both turned it down. The problem was that they needed a big star to keep it going, but Jackman is so damn brilliant and engaging that it would have been a thankless task to follow his Tony-winning performance; the ensemble is not enough to keep it going, nor is the musical and staging. Not to mention that it looks like an exhausting role.

Well, I still greatly regret that I never saw it on Broadway, but if Jackman ever makes his Carousel movie post-writers-strike, I'm there.