Insignificant social interactions have an insidious way of shaping one's external persona, especially when they're the only social interactions you have with most people (out of necessity or choice). Granted, this generally means any misconceptions that these interactions would produce are limited to people who you barely know or have reason to care about. Certainly it doesn't matter what they think of you in the long run. But if you're particularly obsessed with your social life, or painfully neurotic, as I am, about offending or slighting ANYone, then this can become an irritating, sometimes incapacitating, fixation.
So in honor of my own experiences and observations of this phenomenon, here's a helpful guide showing how to inadvertently come off as a terrible person despite how nice and considerate you actually are. Especially useful in settings such as the workplace, communal living spaces, or school.
1. Be focused on what you're doing or who you're talking to. If you're very involved with your work, or a very good listener, then you're guaranteed to offend anyone who desperately wants your attention while you're busy caring about something else.
2. Have close friends and not-so-close friends. This seems like a no-brainer, but you'd be amazed how intensely hurt someone can feel that you wouldn't go to their premiere concert because you're at your brother's wedding. I mean, you just met a week ago! How could you forget?!
3. Misjudge someone's proximity to a door or elevator. Heaven forbid you stay there with the door open making them run awkwardly, OR fail to keep it open when they're a block away!
4. Be shy. This is a HUGE one and probably the most powerful weapon in my awkwardness arsenal. If I've ever come off rude or ambivalent to you, this is most probably the reason. If you're shy, you're never quite sure when it's appropriate to talk to someone, what to say, what to do, etc. So if your ex-roommate walks by, or their ex-girlfriend, or their ex-girlfriend's ex-TF who you met once at a party, you desperately avoid eye contact while glancing back and forth to see if they're trying to catch your eye or say hi or smile and oh god, is that even them?! This has been so powerful as to make me some serious enemies AND scare me away from public places like dining halls or streets.
5. Have commitments and a schedule. “Sorry, I'm in a rush, ten minutes late to class but let's catch up!” is practically tantamount to “You're a worthless peon, why in god's name would I make time to say hello to you?”
6. Have 2 or less eyes. Nothing quite like NOT seeing your best friend across the street to the left behind that “No Parking” sign to ruin a relationship.
7. Own a phone. In addition, don't always be able to answer that phone or respond to messages within 2-3 minutes. Sometimes a trivial conversation will have to be cut short for a more important matter. And sometimes a more important matter – or sleep – will prevent responding to a trivial message. This conundrum is no doubt the culmination of the technological destruction of human interactions.
There are plenty others, including: not having photographic memory, having priorities, having a sense of humor or lacking one at key moments, not being able to be genuinely interested in everything, only being able to speak to one person at a time...Countless ways, really. Many overlapping.
I've fallen victim to the asshole-assumption in numerous occasions on account of such interactions, as the accuser and the accused, and I apologize on both fronts. I feel awful whenever I'm conscious enough to realize I've let myself misjudge someone on the basis of these things, but as you could probably tell by now, I'm really good at feeling awful for things. So yeah, be wary, I guess, of looking like or assuming that someone else is A DICK.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sucker Punch. Yeah, really.
Sorry it's been a while, oh blog. I still owe you posts about my future and religion and things like that, I think. But first I'm going to talk about Sucker Punch because I remember it.
So Sucker Punch. Getting bad reviews. Was worried going in to it, but it was a last-minute decision for $5, and at the very least the visuals looked wonderful, so I thought why not. Zack Snyder has sometimes let me down (as a classicist, 300 was iffy), but Watchmen and the implausibly-good remake of Dawn of the Dead convinced me that he could make a damn good movie under the right conditions. So I was in.
Or I should add, the fact that the visuals included some pretty, doll-looking girls in skimpy outfits being badasses in an anime-esque manner helped considerably. Also made me worried about the exploitative or patronizing content, but I was in anyway.
Visuals? Awesome in my book. That was pretty much guaranteed – I don't know if he's made a not-gorgeous movie, actually. Very video game in a good way. I also appreciated the look of the girls, while definitely artificial and bordering on jail-bait; I'm not one to reject the impossibly-beautiful depictions of men or women in art, even low art – big difference between this and digitally-enhanced women on magazine covers for young girls, I think. Feel free to disagree. The outfits were lovely. I might have preferred at least one butch character, gay or not, but I'm fine with what I got. Didn't see it in 3-D or anything, but I was happy with what I got and fuck 3-D anyway. Also, Spartacus: Blood and Sand prepared me for the abuse of slow-mo, but it was a little annoying I guess.
Story? Who the fuck cares, honestly. It wasn't amazing. There were a laughable amount of cliches and very little – maybe none – of the plot wasn't predictable. Even the “sucker punch” (HAHA I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE MR. SNYDER) of the ending wasn't that suckery punchery. I loved the idea and a great deal of the execution, actually. I liked the iterative quality of the plot – 3 fantasies embedded in each other in a much less sophisticated way than Inception, quest for 5 items, 5 girls to go through, etc. Considering that the story was impressively created by Snyder and a co-writer, it was rather good. Mostly if one is able to have fun with it, laugh at a reasonable amount of the pathos, and suspend some goddamn disbelief.
Content? It was clear early on that, as usual with Snyder, realism was not a priority. Which, once again, is fine. This is a fantasy in more than a few ways – sexual, story-wise, etc. Anyone expecting a clearly empowering or Kill Bill-esque story of vengeance will be disappointed. But this story was somewhat tailor-made to Felice, I must say. It is fucking absurd in just the way that I enjoy. Beyond ridiculous, sometimes trashy, often campy and aesthetically-minded. The perfect mix of stereotypical femininity, empowering kick-ass-ness, and cheesecake that is clearly represented by the pin-ups that litter my bedroom walls. I like different mixes, like that in Baise-Moi or Lady Vengeance or the Millennium trilogy, but this was acceptable in ways that didn't make me puke. Yes they wear short skirts and ridiculously fight in heels and grunt like porn stars and never have so much as a hair out of place or a blemish on their porcelain skin, but they respond to being victims by fighting back on their own, oddly without the help of a male hero (unless you count the sensei, Leonard-Nemoy-looking guy) and without being subjugated by them very often without serious revenge. I anticipate mostly no one will agree with this assessment, but that's all good.
Another plausible reason this was so appealing to me is a peculiar fantasy of mine which I know is shared by at least a few others. In the right mindset – depressed, feeling powerless, feeling like a badass mofo – as I walk in public, a part of me desperately desires to be confronted. On a dark street I want to be intimidated by a mugger, someone bigger than me, often a man (not to be sexist, but my history of fearing men as a child and hating my gender for years is the root of this), or be physically attacked, mugged, whatever. And I want to fight the fuck back. I want to pound them into the ground while yelling and not taking any shit or being a victim. Maybe this would be a later vigilante quest, but ideally I'd just like to tear them down right there. Kill them. Do my ego proud. Do my paranoid, agoraphobic father proud by being the resilient, powerful daughter he made me into.
Am I really going to be attacked this way? Probably not. Or maybe plausibly so, I really don't know. I try not to let it happen, even when I test the water to vaguely hope I will. At least I've been verbally berated from afar, and responded often in-line with this aggressive desire of mine; that feels good. Am I likely to respond this way to actually being attacked? I'm not really sure. I've lapsed hard in my physical strength, my martial arts training, my fighting instincts. I know the smart moves – to give the money over, be vigilant and report the incident, don't necessarily resist to avoid being hurt further or killed. I imagine I'd occasionally look back on such an event and feel ashamed, regret not living out that odd fantasy. Would I be naïve and irresponsible to take the other approach? Could I decide reasonably well in the moment? Would I actually win? I just don't know. I'm good at judging situations. Beyond that, I don't know.
I know this is a somewhat common fantasy, to some extent. It's a response to feeling weak, being abused in the past, feeling powerless, resenting one's gender or the position it puts you in sometimes. Sometimes it's very dangerous. Sometimes it results in serious violence issues. I think I'm far short of that. But it's hard for me not to be empathetic to those who end up at that extreme.
Sometimes my fantasy has me intensely butch, being the male I often desire to be, sending out a “fuck you” to my gender and the attacker's assumptions about me, male or female. Or I'm as feminine as can be, assumed to be a victim, or one who wouldn't resist or say no, and I turn the tables and prove that it makes no goddamn difference and I don't have to “try to be male” to defend myself or prove my strength. The latter is no doubt why Sucker Punch was appealing to me. Even though the girls go through intense abuse, are forced to be victims for a while, come off that way often, and wear those ridiculous outfits, they DO fight back in a very real and “fuck you” way. They aren't masculine at all. It doesn't matter. They don't always win and there are serious repercussions, even in this ridiculous fantasy world that bypasses most consequences. The ending is predictably not unambiguously happy. The movie is, I will readily admit, not brilliant or original in a lot of ways. But goddamn do I appreciate this aspect of it. It's living out that fantasy, without having to lament the fact that I don't look like them, can't, will never be an anime doll with a short skirt who wields a sword against a rapist. It's a rare opportunity to live through the version of the fantasy that doesn't appeal to my butch side (which I still love), that makes me embrace being female and even feminine without resentment. It avoids most of the traps of the victim who fights back but in patronizing and debasing ways, or who responds with seriously fucked up methods (which I sometimes appreciate), undignified methods, things like extortion and taking advantage of stereotypes and filling so many others. Or maybe I'm forgiving too much to convince myself it's OK to like this pulpy, ridiculous film. Or maybe I'm still annoyed that the woman in I Spit on Your Grave felt the need to have consensual sex with her rapists before killing them in an uncomfortably exploitative way.
So those are my ranting thoughts and one of my odd fantasies that I felt the need to share with only a little embarrassment. I liked Sucker Punch. I recommend it with a shit-load of reservations. You could listen to my recommendation if you want. But I DID think Machete was awesome, so I probably don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
So Sucker Punch. Getting bad reviews. Was worried going in to it, but it was a last-minute decision for $5, and at the very least the visuals looked wonderful, so I thought why not. Zack Snyder has sometimes let me down (as a classicist, 300 was iffy), but Watchmen and the implausibly-good remake of Dawn of the Dead convinced me that he could make a damn good movie under the right conditions. So I was in.
Or I should add, the fact that the visuals included some pretty, doll-looking girls in skimpy outfits being badasses in an anime-esque manner helped considerably. Also made me worried about the exploitative or patronizing content, but I was in anyway.
Visuals? Awesome in my book. That was pretty much guaranteed – I don't know if he's made a not-gorgeous movie, actually. Very video game in a good way. I also appreciated the look of the girls, while definitely artificial and bordering on jail-bait; I'm not one to reject the impossibly-beautiful depictions of men or women in art, even low art – big difference between this and digitally-enhanced women on magazine covers for young girls, I think. Feel free to disagree. The outfits were lovely. I might have preferred at least one butch character, gay or not, but I'm fine with what I got. Didn't see it in 3-D or anything, but I was happy with what I got and fuck 3-D anyway. Also, Spartacus: Blood and Sand prepared me for the abuse of slow-mo, but it was a little annoying I guess.
Story? Who the fuck cares, honestly. It wasn't amazing. There were a laughable amount of cliches and very little – maybe none – of the plot wasn't predictable. Even the “sucker punch” (HAHA I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE MR. SNYDER) of the ending wasn't that suckery punchery. I loved the idea and a great deal of the execution, actually. I liked the iterative quality of the plot – 3 fantasies embedded in each other in a much less sophisticated way than Inception, quest for 5 items, 5 girls to go through, etc. Considering that the story was impressively created by Snyder and a co-writer, it was rather good. Mostly if one is able to have fun with it, laugh at a reasonable amount of the pathos, and suspend some goddamn disbelief.
Content? It was clear early on that, as usual with Snyder, realism was not a priority. Which, once again, is fine. This is a fantasy in more than a few ways – sexual, story-wise, etc. Anyone expecting a clearly empowering or Kill Bill-esque story of vengeance will be disappointed. But this story was somewhat tailor-made to Felice, I must say. It is fucking absurd in just the way that I enjoy. Beyond ridiculous, sometimes trashy, often campy and aesthetically-minded. The perfect mix of stereotypical femininity, empowering kick-ass-ness, and cheesecake that is clearly represented by the pin-ups that litter my bedroom walls. I like different mixes, like that in Baise-Moi or Lady Vengeance or the Millennium trilogy, but this was acceptable in ways that didn't make me puke. Yes they wear short skirts and ridiculously fight in heels and grunt like porn stars and never have so much as a hair out of place or a blemish on their porcelain skin, but they respond to being victims by fighting back on their own, oddly without the help of a male hero (unless you count the sensei, Leonard-Nemoy-looking guy) and without being subjugated by them very often without serious revenge. I anticipate mostly no one will agree with this assessment, but that's all good.
Another plausible reason this was so appealing to me is a peculiar fantasy of mine which I know is shared by at least a few others. In the right mindset – depressed, feeling powerless, feeling like a badass mofo – as I walk in public, a part of me desperately desires to be confronted. On a dark street I want to be intimidated by a mugger, someone bigger than me, often a man (not to be sexist, but my history of fearing men as a child and hating my gender for years is the root of this), or be physically attacked, mugged, whatever. And I want to fight the fuck back. I want to pound them into the ground while yelling and not taking any shit or being a victim. Maybe this would be a later vigilante quest, but ideally I'd just like to tear them down right there. Kill them. Do my ego proud. Do my paranoid, agoraphobic father proud by being the resilient, powerful daughter he made me into.
Am I really going to be attacked this way? Probably not. Or maybe plausibly so, I really don't know. I try not to let it happen, even when I test the water to vaguely hope I will. At least I've been verbally berated from afar, and responded often in-line with this aggressive desire of mine; that feels good. Am I likely to respond this way to actually being attacked? I'm not really sure. I've lapsed hard in my physical strength, my martial arts training, my fighting instincts. I know the smart moves – to give the money over, be vigilant and report the incident, don't necessarily resist to avoid being hurt further or killed. I imagine I'd occasionally look back on such an event and feel ashamed, regret not living out that odd fantasy. Would I be naïve and irresponsible to take the other approach? Could I decide reasonably well in the moment? Would I actually win? I just don't know. I'm good at judging situations. Beyond that, I don't know.
I know this is a somewhat common fantasy, to some extent. It's a response to feeling weak, being abused in the past, feeling powerless, resenting one's gender or the position it puts you in sometimes. Sometimes it's very dangerous. Sometimes it results in serious violence issues. I think I'm far short of that. But it's hard for me not to be empathetic to those who end up at that extreme.
Sometimes my fantasy has me intensely butch, being the male I often desire to be, sending out a “fuck you” to my gender and the attacker's assumptions about me, male or female. Or I'm as feminine as can be, assumed to be a victim, or one who wouldn't resist or say no, and I turn the tables and prove that it makes no goddamn difference and I don't have to “try to be male” to defend myself or prove my strength. The latter is no doubt why Sucker Punch was appealing to me. Even though the girls go through intense abuse, are forced to be victims for a while, come off that way often, and wear those ridiculous outfits, they DO fight back in a very real and “fuck you” way. They aren't masculine at all. It doesn't matter. They don't always win and there are serious repercussions, even in this ridiculous fantasy world that bypasses most consequences. The ending is predictably not unambiguously happy. The movie is, I will readily admit, not brilliant or original in a lot of ways. But goddamn do I appreciate this aspect of it. It's living out that fantasy, without having to lament the fact that I don't look like them, can't, will never be an anime doll with a short skirt who wields a sword against a rapist. It's a rare opportunity to live through the version of the fantasy that doesn't appeal to my butch side (which I still love), that makes me embrace being female and even feminine without resentment. It avoids most of the traps of the victim who fights back but in patronizing and debasing ways, or who responds with seriously fucked up methods (which I sometimes appreciate), undignified methods, things like extortion and taking advantage of stereotypes and filling so many others. Or maybe I'm forgiving too much to convince myself it's OK to like this pulpy, ridiculous film. Or maybe I'm still annoyed that the woman in I Spit on Your Grave felt the need to have consensual sex with her rapists before killing them in an uncomfortably exploitative way.
So those are my ranting thoughts and one of my odd fantasies that I felt the need to share with only a little embarrassment. I liked Sucker Punch. I recommend it with a shit-load of reservations. You could listen to my recommendation if you want. But I DID think Machete was awesome, so I probably don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
40 Things I Miss About Greece
Shout out to my fellow Olympians and Nafplioli. I will return to Greece at some point, with everyone I love. Hopefully their economy stays in the can.
- good ass feta
- ancient history around every corner
- indoor smoking
- old men EVERYWHERE
- ubiquitous ouzo
- living in 5-star hotels
- some amount of the weather
- being cat-called?
- gypsies
- those single-packaged, chocolate-filled croissants
- spanicopita and those pannini things
- crazy Euro clubs that we snuck into
- the stray dogs in Athens
- the stray cats in everywhere
- people with mythological names, and Giorgos/Yorgos
- pebble and non-pebble beaches
- relaxation
- weird museums
- twisty, beautiful roads
- 50 cent water
- Euro-trash
- DELPHI
- talking with people over wine and ouzo
- accurate Greek salad
- frappes
- souvenir shops
- cheap clothing stores
- the Palaka
- Zorba's Coffee and Music Bar at Olympia
- bikinis
- Greeks speaking English. And Greek.
- hearing American dance music from 5-10 years ago
- German tourists
- Spain winning the World Cup
- tour guides
- feeling like a native in a tourist town
- daredevil taxi drivers
- the few hours we spent not on winding roads on buses
- joking about the Elgin Marbles
- beautiful Byzantine churches
Share your own?
-----------
Holy crap, and saganaki.
 |
| From Acropolis |
- good ass feta
- ancient history around every corner
- indoor smoking
- old men EVERYWHERE
- ubiquitous ouzo
- living in 5-star hotels
- some amount of the weather
- being cat-called?
- gypsies
- those single-packaged, chocolate-filled croissants
- spanicopita and those pannini things
- crazy Euro clubs that we snuck into
- the stray dogs in Athens
- the stray cats in everywhere
- people with mythological names, and Giorgos/Yorgos
- pebble and non-pebble beaches
- relaxation
- weird museums
- twisty, beautiful roads
- 50 cent water
- Euro-trash
- DELPHI
- talking with people over wine and ouzo
- accurate Greek salad
- frappes
- souvenir shops
- cheap clothing stores
- the Palaka
- Zorba's Coffee and Music Bar at Olympia
- bikinis
- Greeks speaking English. And Greek.
- hearing American dance music from 5-10 years ago
- German tourists
- Spain winning the World Cup
- tour guides
- feeling like a native in a tourist town
- daredevil taxi drivers
- the few hours we spent not on winding roads on buses
- joking about the Elgin Marbles
- beautiful Byzantine churches
Share your own?
-----------
Holy crap, and saganaki.
25 Telltale Signs of a Really Good Orgasm
Probably TMI, hopefully applicable to more people than myself. Pretty much all from personal experience, and achieved with much practice. I apologize to anyone who hasn't been able to enjoy the same for whatever reasons.
- temporary blindness
- immediate and lasting paralysis of various limbs, possibly tingling as well
- immediate random hunger pangs
- narcolepsy and muteness
- muscle twitching in various areas
- humming (from the mouth)
- dry-mouth (apparently...)
- temporary out-of-body sensation
- near-deafness in one or both ears
- weak knees and weak everything actually
- uncontrollable laughter or shit-eating grin (not a scat reference)
- immediate desire for more
- breathing difficulty
- ability to feel/hear your heartbeat intensely for a moment
- overpowering affectionate urges, not in a mushy way
Many stereotypically male sensations there, unsurprisingly: I just want to pass out, without pillow talk please, and maybe eat a sandwich first.
Some, mostly men, have also mentioned an immediate existential feeling of emptiness or something like that, which I haven't personally gotten. I hope that's not just a male thing, but I am sympathetic. Also I wonder what other male post-and concurrent-coital sensations are like, what overlap and differences there are. I want the gift of Teiresias. Also I'm kind of weird and perverted, as has been thoroughly established by now.
- temporary blindness
- immediate and lasting paralysis of various limbs, possibly tingling as well
- immediate random hunger pangs
- narcolepsy and muteness
- muscle twitching in various areas
- humming (from the mouth)
- dry-mouth (apparently...)
- temporary out-of-body sensation
- near-deafness in one or both ears
- weak knees and weak everything actually
- uncontrollable laughter or shit-eating grin (not a scat reference)
- immediate desire for more
- breathing difficulty
- ability to feel/hear your heartbeat intensely for a moment
- overpowering affectionate urges, not in a mushy way
Many stereotypically male sensations there, unsurprisingly: I just want to pass out, without pillow talk please, and maybe eat a sandwich first.
Some, mostly men, have also mentioned an immediate existential feeling of emptiness or something like that, which I haven't personally gotten. I hope that's not just a male thing, but I am sympathetic. Also I wonder what other male post-and concurrent-coital sensations are like, what overlap and differences there are. I want the gift of Teiresias. Also I'm kind of weird and perverted, as has been thoroughly established by now.
Tura. Fucking. Satana.
Don't call her Miss. Don't call her Tura SAYtana. You call her Tura Fucking Satana and you pray for mercy and sex.
I have a number of other entries in my head, many of which feel too masturbatingly self-centered to post in a row. I have no qualms about full disclosure and self-reflection, but I know how the Internet works (my boyfriend bought me this book!), that its primary purpose is exhibitionism which, if abused, is god-awful obnoxious and arrogant, even if the content is self-effacing (= compliment-demanding, often). One of these, however, is a very serious and pointed essay on a large life decision I've made, which I want to share with anyone who'll read it and hopefully gain understanding and acceptance for it. It has to do with putting medical school on the back-burner, or tabling it for good, in favor of opening my options to other, equally exciting and meaningful paths. In a non-hippie way. I'll give you the details later.
For now, something more important compels me. The death of Elizabeth Taylor, our fag-hag ally advocate beautiful scandalous queen-on-earth, pains me, makes me want to watch Suddenly Last Summer or Cleopatra or another of her masterpieces - and her compatriot in beauty and awesome, Jane Russell - but beyond this, it reminds me of another recent death...A death honored admirably by many, but only in very specific segments of our world, and much more widely overlooked. The death of an amazing, awe-inspiring, actual hero-goddess of a woman:
Tura Goddamned Satana.
If you know who she is, you know enough to know that her death is a loss that the world does not deserve. Hopefully you've read other elegies that do her even more justice than my paltry words might. Despite this, I am driven to personally express my grief and worship of this hero of mine, who even to her death remained an image of sexiness, confidence, intimidation and beauty in all forms, longevity and not-putting-up-with-your-shit-ness.
Her most powerful and career-defining role is without a doubt in the overlooked classic by that mastophilic master director, Russ Meyer: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! You must, must see this entire black-and-white magnum opus in its entirety, not even just in shitty quality on YouTube, but here is one of Tura's best scenes, delivered in a shout that pierces heaven and jock-straps alike:
She plays a thinly-veiled reflection of herself, named Varla. Varla is a tough fucking bitch with a black-belt in Aikido, a pair of otherworldly orbs barely restrained by a tightblack dominatrix gang-girl cat-suit, hair and eyes that could slice through granite and a chip on her goddamned shoulder. She can out-drive a cyclone. She can karate chop the pussy out of you. She's probably bisexual because what wouldn't want her, what couldn't be subdued by her power beyond human words? I hate to break it to you, but nudity is absent from this film. Close, but not nearly to the extent one would hope, especially comparing to Meyers' later, debatably better works like my personal favorite, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Far from being pigeon-holed, Tura owned the face out of her role and lived the life of Varla, the clothes and the attitude and the hair, to her grave. She gave it to the world at large at conventions for the benefit of humanity. Her other roles were meaty but she wisely and without resentment never tried to surpass or shed the skin of Varla the Mighty.
Tura went on to star in such classics as The Astro-Zombies and a few others, which I thankfully still have time to enjoy. From what I've seen, her assets and attitude are on display as they rightfully should be, but an alarmingly less butch aesthetic is employed – strikingly refreshing, arousing, and a testament to her damned good range as an actress and as a body. Her body and sex appeal were by far not all there was to her, but she had no shame in them and owned them as much as Stephen Hawking owns his intellect, or George Carlin owns his wit.
Perhaps the most amazing and admirable aspect of Ms. Satana was her life itself. Her back-story is widely accepted to be right out of one of her pictures, a parade of sex, violence, exploitation and vigor, a crime novel of epic proportions, the origin story of an amazonian warrior queen. Born to a Japanese father and a white, Native-American mother, Tura moved from Japan to America at a young age, in a time far from ideal for an interracial, and especially part-Japanese, girl. She spent time in an internment camp with her family. She reportedly developed her trademark chest at a painfully young age, and this only heaped more ridicule upon her from her peers.
Here is where a tragic turn morphs into a legend. I accept that it will incur skepticism, and probably rightfully so, but I embrace it as Christians embrace scripture, but with even more credulity and empirical standing. Tura was gang-raped at the age of 9 by five men. Her response? Throwing herself into an intense study of martial arts, primarily Aikido, to the point of mastery. The judge who heard her case, supposedly bribed by someone, and in a period known for its ignominious categorization of rape and tendency to blame the victim or overlook the crime entirely, let the criminals off the hook and sent Tura to good old-fashioned reform school, that den of forced lesbianism and gang violence.
Perhaps eschewing the lesbianism, Tura duly made herself at home in the gang community, and went on to establish a girl gang in her home town, rightfully standing as its proud Caesar, which was dedicated to hunting down and brutally punishing the men who mistreated women and girls in her neighborhood. She claims the girls of her town never felt safer than under their guardian fists. And in the meantime, Tura went on to utilize her newly-seeded aggression, confidence and physical skill to purposefully hunt down each and every one of her attackers and dole out precisely the vendetta-motivated, dubiously legal justice they deserved. It is unknown whether they lived, were sexually assaulted, or otherwise maimed, but Tura claims they didn't recognize her until she told them, and she showed no mercy.
After this, at the age of 13 or so, as we are told, Tura got eyes for the big lights and made her way to Hollywood. The beloved star of silent screen and director Harold Lloyd was instantly enamored, along with the rest of the world, and simply had to take somewhat sensuous photos of the girl with the fake ID. Some pictures out there claim to be from Lloyd, and may very well reveal her overdeveloped 13-year-old self, but this is probably less likely than the existence of the Traci Lords tape. Yet it is without doubt that her sex appeal was both inherent and thoroughly owned by her at a young age, in defiance of her young violation. I believe Tura went on to dance, tried to make it, then received lead poisoning from her makeup and went back home or elsewhere, unable to paint her face as was the custom.
Tura then went on to a successful career as a shameless, proud exotic dancer. She did burlesque. She did plain old stripping. And she was quite literally nationally regarded as among the very, very best at it. Her face, personality, style, body, danger, and everything about her smashed audiences into submission and made them want more, want to be dominated and to dominate alike. She later decried the recent burlesque renaissance and wore her stripper crown without qualms. Her parents were even supportive of her titillating stardom.
The rest is history, as she found her way to Russ Meyers' doorstep, followed by Traci Lords', jumped from one exploitation flick to another, and made her way off into the night for many years to live a somewhat normal life stripping, then nursing, then doing whatever it was a woman of her mettle can do in the world. She married, she had children, she was shot by an ex-lover and kept kicking in her latter days as a nurse and on the convention circuit. In retrospect she got the goddamned respect she had deserved from the first. She gained weight and nothing, nothing changed.
Listen to it in her own brazen, man-melting words:
Tura Satana died only this year. She gave Quentin Tarantino tentatively her blessing on his supposed remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The false rumor of Britney Spears' casting elicited the threat to “castrate” Tarantino, and her contribution to the original film as well as advising the as-yet-unmade remake ended up surpassing that of the actual filmmakers. Most recently, I believe, she guested in the upcoming Sugar Boxx, whose trailer outrageously neglects to include her posthumous image, far as I can tell. Among other things, it looks like a winner on all counts:
There is no doubt much more to be said of Tura Satana. Many writers have done her greater justice. Those lucky enough to survive her presence, her biography with Russ Meyer, and the preserved image of the woman herself attest to her divinity and sinfulness. She is one of few heroes of mine, up there with Oscar Wilde, Stephen Fry, and Alexander the Great. I hope those of you culturally-deprived enough to have overlooked this goddess have bothered to scan to the end of this too-long post, or at the least have enjoyed the pictures and maybe even videos. I don't believe in an afterlife, but if she was lucky enough to end up in an alternate universe version of one devised by Michio Kaku or some other quantum asshole, I am confident she has since pounded the ever-loving shit out of it until it winced the words, through bloodied teeth, “TURA. FUCKING. SATANA.”
I have a number of other entries in my head, many of which feel too masturbatingly self-centered to post in a row. I have no qualms about full disclosure and self-reflection, but I know how the Internet works (my boyfriend bought me this book!), that its primary purpose is exhibitionism which, if abused, is god-awful obnoxious and arrogant, even if the content is self-effacing (= compliment-demanding, often). One of these, however, is a very serious and pointed essay on a large life decision I've made, which I want to share with anyone who'll read it and hopefully gain understanding and acceptance for it. It has to do with putting medical school on the back-burner, or tabling it for good, in favor of opening my options to other, equally exciting and meaningful paths. In a non-hippie way. I'll give you the details later.
For now, something more important compels me. The death of Elizabeth Taylor, our fag-hag ally advocate beautiful scandalous queen-on-earth, pains me, makes me want to watch Suddenly Last Summer or Cleopatra or another of her masterpieces - and her compatriot in beauty and awesome, Jane Russell - but beyond this, it reminds me of another recent death...A death honored admirably by many, but only in very specific segments of our world, and much more widely overlooked. The death of an amazing, awe-inspiring, actual hero-goddess of a woman:
Tura Goddamned Satana.
If you know who she is, you know enough to know that her death is a loss that the world does not deserve. Hopefully you've read other elegies that do her even more justice than my paltry words might. Despite this, I am driven to personally express my grief and worship of this hero of mine, who even to her death remained an image of sexiness, confidence, intimidation and beauty in all forms, longevity and not-putting-up-with-your-shit-ness.
Her most powerful and career-defining role is without a doubt in the overlooked classic by that mastophilic master director, Russ Meyer: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! You must, must see this entire black-and-white magnum opus in its entirety, not even just in shitty quality on YouTube, but here is one of Tura's best scenes, delivered in a shout that pierces heaven and jock-straps alike:
She plays a thinly-veiled reflection of herself, named Varla. Varla is a tough fucking bitch with a black-belt in Aikido, a pair of otherworldly orbs barely restrained by a tightblack dominatrix gang-girl cat-suit, hair and eyes that could slice through granite and a chip on her goddamned shoulder. She can out-drive a cyclone. She can karate chop the pussy out of you. She's probably bisexual because what wouldn't want her, what couldn't be subdued by her power beyond human words? I hate to break it to you, but nudity is absent from this film. Close, but not nearly to the extent one would hope, especially comparing to Meyers' later, debatably better works like my personal favorite, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Far from being pigeon-holed, Tura owned the face out of her role and lived the life of Varla, the clothes and the attitude and the hair, to her grave. She gave it to the world at large at conventions for the benefit of humanity. Her other roles were meaty but she wisely and without resentment never tried to surpass or shed the skin of Varla the Mighty.
Tura went on to star in such classics as The Astro-Zombies and a few others, which I thankfully still have time to enjoy. From what I've seen, her assets and attitude are on display as they rightfully should be, but an alarmingly less butch aesthetic is employed – strikingly refreshing, arousing, and a testament to her damned good range as an actress and as a body. Her body and sex appeal were by far not all there was to her, but she had no shame in them and owned them as much as Stephen Hawking owns his intellect, or George Carlin owns his wit.
Perhaps the most amazing and admirable aspect of Ms. Satana was her life itself. Her back-story is widely accepted to be right out of one of her pictures, a parade of sex, violence, exploitation and vigor, a crime novel of epic proportions, the origin story of an amazonian warrior queen. Born to a Japanese father and a white, Native-American mother, Tura moved from Japan to America at a young age, in a time far from ideal for an interracial, and especially part-Japanese, girl. She spent time in an internment camp with her family. She reportedly developed her trademark chest at a painfully young age, and this only heaped more ridicule upon her from her peers.
Here is where a tragic turn morphs into a legend. I accept that it will incur skepticism, and probably rightfully so, but I embrace it as Christians embrace scripture, but with even more credulity and empirical standing. Tura was gang-raped at the age of 9 by five men. Her response? Throwing herself into an intense study of martial arts, primarily Aikido, to the point of mastery. The judge who heard her case, supposedly bribed by someone, and in a period known for its ignominious categorization of rape and tendency to blame the victim or overlook the crime entirely, let the criminals off the hook and sent Tura to good old-fashioned reform school, that den of forced lesbianism and gang violence.
Perhaps eschewing the lesbianism, Tura duly made herself at home in the gang community, and went on to establish a girl gang in her home town, rightfully standing as its proud Caesar, which was dedicated to hunting down and brutally punishing the men who mistreated women and girls in her neighborhood. She claims the girls of her town never felt safer than under their guardian fists. And in the meantime, Tura went on to utilize her newly-seeded aggression, confidence and physical skill to purposefully hunt down each and every one of her attackers and dole out precisely the vendetta-motivated, dubiously legal justice they deserved. It is unknown whether they lived, were sexually assaulted, or otherwise maimed, but Tura claims they didn't recognize her until she told them, and she showed no mercy.
After this, at the age of 13 or so, as we are told, Tura got eyes for the big lights and made her way to Hollywood. The beloved star of silent screen and director Harold Lloyd was instantly enamored, along with the rest of the world, and simply had to take somewhat sensuous photos of the girl with the fake ID. Some pictures out there claim to be from Lloyd, and may very well reveal her overdeveloped 13-year-old self, but this is probably less likely than the existence of the Traci Lords tape. Yet it is without doubt that her sex appeal was both inherent and thoroughly owned by her at a young age, in defiance of her young violation. I believe Tura went on to dance, tried to make it, then received lead poisoning from her makeup and went back home or elsewhere, unable to paint her face as was the custom.
Tura then went on to a successful career as a shameless, proud exotic dancer. She did burlesque. She did plain old stripping. And she was quite literally nationally regarded as among the very, very best at it. Her face, personality, style, body, danger, and everything about her smashed audiences into submission and made them want more, want to be dominated and to dominate alike. She later decried the recent burlesque renaissance and wore her stripper crown without qualms. Her parents were even supportive of her titillating stardom.
The rest is history, as she found her way to Russ Meyers' doorstep, followed by Traci Lords', jumped from one exploitation flick to another, and made her way off into the night for many years to live a somewhat normal life stripping, then nursing, then doing whatever it was a woman of her mettle can do in the world. She married, she had children, she was shot by an ex-lover and kept kicking in her latter days as a nurse and on the convention circuit. In retrospect she got the goddamned respect she had deserved from the first. She gained weight and nothing, nothing changed.
Listen to it in her own brazen, man-melting words:
Tura Satana died only this year. She gave Quentin Tarantino tentatively her blessing on his supposed remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The false rumor of Britney Spears' casting elicited the threat to “castrate” Tarantino, and her contribution to the original film as well as advising the as-yet-unmade remake ended up surpassing that of the actual filmmakers. Most recently, I believe, she guested in the upcoming Sugar Boxx, whose trailer outrageously neglects to include her posthumous image, far as I can tell. Among other things, it looks like a winner on all counts:
There is no doubt much more to be said of Tura Satana. Many writers have done her greater justice. Those lucky enough to survive her presence, her biography with Russ Meyer, and the preserved image of the woman herself attest to her divinity and sinfulness. She is one of few heroes of mine, up there with Oscar Wilde, Stephen Fry, and Alexander the Great. I hope those of you culturally-deprived enough to have overlooked this goddess have bothered to scan to the end of this too-long post, or at the least have enjoyed the pictures and maybe even videos. I don't believe in an afterlife, but if she was lucky enough to end up in an alternate universe version of one devised by Michio Kaku or some other quantum asshole, I am confident she has since pounded the ever-loving shit out of it until it winced the words, through bloodied teeth, “TURA. FUCKING. SATANA.”
Thursday, March 24, 2011
The Gay Agenda
Much of this has already been said, but it's still funny I think.
Nod to my Harvard Queerz.
Nod to my Harvard Queerz.
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