This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
Bettie Page
9:23 PM Monday, April 17, 2006
[Stranger bedfellows than one would imagine]
The recent publicity around the movie The Notorious Bettie Page has brought back memories to old-timers like me and also reminds us how politics makes for even stranger bedfellows than one would imagine. The movie tells the tale of Bettie, a sweet Southern girl who appears perpetually naive about men after being molested repeatedly by her father. She becomes a New York pinup model, and is now a national icon and the most famous fetish/bondage model of all time. Her sweetness and innocence, portrayed in the film by Gretchen Mol, overshadows the popular preoccupation with the dark side of kink erotica. At the time of Bettie's early popularity in the 1950's, however, that preoccupation was the focus of a Congressional investigation led by Tennesseean Estes Kefauver, who apparently believed, as many do today, that comic books and girlie magazines were a significant cause of criminal behavior in youth. Kefauver died of a heart attack in 1963, and was thereby spared having to see the Internet content and graphic novels of the current era (2006).
The film about Bettie, which was written and directed by women, Guinevere Turner and Mary Harron respectively, also portrays the brother-sister photography team of Irving and Paula Klaw, who started out with a store selling movie magazines, then created a pinup and fetish photography studio. The Klaws were targeted by the Kefauver hearings, and ultimately closed shop and burned most of their negatives. The closure of the Klaw studio, advancing age, and ultimately being overwhelmed by decades of pent-up rage, brought about a long period of hard times for Bettie (not shown explicitly in the film) until she was rediscovered as a living icon in 1992.
So what does this all have to do with the meaning of life? Freud referred to the "it" (id in Latin) a reservoir of instinctive passion in all of us, which has to be kept under control. Art and popular media (both of which include comics and erotica) celebrate, but also exploit the "it" in the form of sex, violence, and violent sex. The "it" terrifies us, fascinates us, excites us, destabilizes us, and has the potential to turn us into artists, criminals , and politicians. Kefauver, although reviled by his contemporary political enemies for opposing racial segregation, got into his anti-comics and anti-erotica crusade while investigating organized crime. You might say that the strangeness of their bedfellows was a problem that afflicted both Estes and Bettie in their era, as it affects sex workers and politicians today.
Links to more about these topics: BettiePage Freud Pornography Fetish MaryHarron IrvingKlaw
Links to more art and images about: Erotica Sexy Fetish Freud
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