SMEAR THE QUEER by Chad Kouri

Smear the queer is a variation of another school yard game widely known as Tag or It. Also known as Kill The Carrier or Muckle, the rules are actually the exact opposite of Tag; all of the other players chase ‘it’ also referred to as all-on-one. There are no out of bounds, no teams and no winners.This player who carries the “it’ object (most commonly a football) does there best to avoid being tackled or smeared by the other players who are attempting to take the ball away. Once the ball leaves the hands of the carrier, the “it” position is filled by whomever has the guts to pick up the ball. More often than not the name of the game is repeatedly yelled out while playing. Seeing how there are no real winners, technically the game is endless but most games only last one recess period. Kids have also been known to sabotage a friendly game of catch by tossing the ball and yelling “smear the queer” immediately making the receiver of the catch a target. There is some debate over whether or not the name is offensive because the idea is everyone wants to be the queer and the point is to be the queer longer than anyone else but we can probably assume that it was not named with good intentions.

Smear the queer is not the only offensive term that is found in the school yard. Other derogatory sayings have snuck into child vernacular after decades of use by adults without us noticing like Indian Giver (one who gives something only to take it back with obvious negative implications against Native Americans) and “Yellow”(a coward or traitor with suspect origins in the early American hatred of Oriental immigrants). Of course one day the children grow up and more than likely understand the meaning of the words and stop using them but I can’t help but think how twisted all of it is. Oh well, it was a fun game and I have not had a sudden urge to tackle any gay people so I assume I’m no worse for wear.

FOOT TAG by Sam Rosen

A school wide phenomenon at Lincoln Hall Junior High School (circa 1997). While other schools were focusing on more conventional sports such as Football or Basketball, even conventional one-hand tag, Lincoln Hall students were pioneering a new sport, a sport with the speed of tag and the strategy of hide and seek.

The way the game is played is fairly simple. Two or more kids, with an unlimited group of players, all line up in a circle equally distanced (a couple steps away) facing the center of the circle. The winner of the last game begins and is allowed two steps, but at no point during their move can they have both feet on the ground at the same time.  The objective of the game is to simply tag an opponent’s foot. On your turn you lunge towards fellow players and can respond with two steps away from you (or towards another player). Those steps can only be initiated while the other person is mid-move. Turns are rotated clockwise in the circle and if a foot gets tagged, you my friend are out. If you are the last man or woman standing, you are it (although, we could never seem to get any girls to play with us.)

I still play this game with my brothers in our boredom, but my knees aren’t as agile as they used to be. Have fun.

FOURSQUARE By David Sieren

There was a time in grade school when Mr. Rogers was all the rage. I’m not talking about the early years of grade school either. I’m talking about a period late in my tenure at Lloyd Street Elementary – around 5th or 6th grade to be exact. You’re probably thinking the same thing I initially thought at the time: why would a bunch of “older kids” get so excited about a dopey guy in a cardigan who taught us that “we’d never go down the drain“ years earlier when we still took daily naps, ate graham crackers and had half days at school?

Well, this wasn’t that Mr. Rogers, this was our Mr. Rogers. Our Mr. Rogers jumped around and stood on desks while teaching history. Our Mr. Rogers rode a motorcylce and listened to Young M.C. And most important, our Mr. Rogers was the teacher that brought us Four Square.

Four Square was the x-game of my childhood compared to the monotonous order handed down during Phy Ed. (Seriously, what good is climbing a rope going to do for you in the real world unless you plan on becoming a superhero? Maybe I’m bitter because I always flunked the Presidential Fitness test, but still…) Sure there was a basic framework, but beyond the red rubber ball swiped from the kickball league and the chalk-defined court, anything was up for grabs.

The objective was simple: fight your way to the top and, once there, do everything you could do to stay in power.

The concept of “server’s rules” was nothing short of enlightenment. Once you reached that pinnacle position in square #4 you had the absolute authority to bend, shape and define the rules of the game to secure your advantage. Your legacy was in your hands as you dictated how hard it would be for others to topple you from the throne. Server spikes. Bobbling. Underhand only. Blackjack. Body language. Creativity was key to survival.

Four Square – and Mr. Rogers by proxy – taught us about the real world that existed beyond the idealized and orderly doors of our school. We learned that rules were malleable and, often times, unfair unless you were the one in control. We also learned that with skill, determination and a little bit of luck you could overcome any odds that were stacked against you. However, once you tasted success, you could very easily fall prey to the mindset that you found yourself rallying against just moments ago.

Now if that isn’t a history lesson, then I don’t know what is. Thanks Mr. Rogers.
Herr Fischer, wie tief ist das Wasser or FISHERMEN HOW DEEP IS THE WATER? by Ina Weise

The Rules are:

you count out who the fisherman is, he stands on one side and the rest

of the kids on the opposite side about 80 ft. away from the fisherman.

The kids yell:”Fisherman, fisherman how deep is the water?”

Fisherman answers for example: “100 meter deep.”

The kids yell again all together asking: “And how will we get over it?”

Now the fisherman tells everyone a way of how to cross the water. A funny way.

He has to move in the same way towards the other kids. only forward

and sideward. Not back.

Everyone starts and the fisherman tries to catch as many kids as

possible to help him catch more kids next time. Who gets caught last

wins!

We used to play that game on the schoolyard. I think it’s funny

because you have to yell at each other. 25 kids yell at the fisherman

and on fisherman yells back. Also you yell when you run or move in a

weird way trying not to get caught.
KING OF THE MOUNTAIN by Alex Fuller

In the center of my elementary school playground was a pyramid made from massive tractor trailer tires. Yeah, we had tire swings and even a ship made from tires, but it was the giant tire pyramid that was the stage for epic battles that eventually ended with the declaration of one mighty king. Well, one mighty king every recess. The catch, you only have a 20 minutes recess to stake your claim. Once you entered that wood chip perimeter at the edge of the battlefield, it was on. The boys raced to the pyramid with arms flailing whilst releasing blood curdling battle crys. And quite simply, you tried your hardest to push the boy standing at the top most point of the pyramid off his “throne.” At final bell, the boy remaining at the peak was declared winner. Of course this playground activity was heavily frowned upon by the administration and was even punishable by after school chalkboard cleaning duty. So of course we all played it as much as possible. Gosh, now i’m thinking about all that chalk dust I’ve inhaled cleaning blackboards over the years… anyways… long live the king!

TETHERBALL by Davey Sommers

One pole, one ball, one rope and one opponent, that’s all you need for tetherball. The game begins with one player resting the ball in their open palm then striking it into motion. It is up to the opposing player to then return the serve. The ball can be struck with the palm or fist, and the first player to get the rope to wrap around the pole completely wins. While there are no official rules to tetherball, these seem to be the most widely used and accepted. And remember, stay on your side.

One needs quick reflexes, a sharp eye, a strong stance and smooth body rotation to really hit that sucker. A grunt, much like those heard by tennis players, is highly recommended and can give you a mental advantage over your opponent. If you can make your grunt as recognizable as Gustav Kuerten and as powerful as Serena williams then you’ve really got something.

To consistently strike the ball in a manner so that it is difficult for your opponent to return requires a great focus that can be hard to develop under daily school yard pressures. One must clear their mind and release themselves from the anxieties caused by the thought of your upcoming math test, and that totally harsh rumor going around about you “liking” someone of the opposite sex, even though you are publicly open about your stance that they indeed have cooties. But those who have played before know that all of that mental blockage can be released with a single smack of that ball. And a victory means a chance to stare deeply at your opponent as they are hit with a blast of air by each passing rotation of the ball; each rotation bringing you closer to the thing that matters most in this moment: people not thinking you’re a wuss.

KICKBALL by Rod Hunting

According to my trusted information source, wikipedia, kickball was invented around 1942. Apparently by some U.S. soldiers during the Tunisia Campaign. Now, I could go on about the rules of kickball, but that’s not really important. What is important to mention, is Spencer White. Spencer White was the best kickball player in the fourth grade. Home runs almost every time. When he got up to kick, we all shouted “move back, he’s gonna boot it.” And we all moved back. I remember this one time when the pitcher gave him a low-roller with no bounce, and he did this thing where he slightly kicked the ball up to himself, then kicked it again, over the outfielder’s heads. I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever seen. So I remembered that, and next time I got up to kick, I tried it. But, I wasn’t as quick as Spencer, and the ball had to bounce before I kicked it again. Everyone started screaming that I was out, and that I couldn’t do it, and I pointed at Spencer and shouted that he’d done it too. The problem was that I’d messed it up. I didn’t do it exactly like he had. They were right, I was out. I tried to be cool, and I failed miserably. This is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of kickball.

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COIL ARE MY FAVORITE
Elijah Burgher

On November 13, 2004, Jhonn Balance died after falling from a second floor landing in his home. His death effectively ended the mighty Coil, which he had founded in 1982 with Peter “Sleazy” Chistopherson. Along with Psychic TV and Chris & Cosey, Coil rose from the ashes of Throbbing Gristle—Sleazy is a member of TG, who recently resurrected—and, with Current 93, Nurse with Wound,

Death in June, plotted a new course for the various strains of experimental music that issued from the first wave of industrial music in the mid-to-late 70s. For more information about the band’s history and recordings, look at the Threshold House site, Brainwashed’s Coil page, or the brief entry on them on the Disinformation site.

Coil are also my favorite. I love a lot of things, and have named possibly hundreds of artists, bands, filmmakers, books, etc. as my “favorite” at one time or another. When Claudine asked me to write an Off-Topic post for the BaS blog, I knew I wanted to write about something that I loved, and considered Swans’ Children of God, Dennis Cooper’s George Myles cycle, and Pasolini’s Salo, the latter of which I’ve seen too many times to justifiably claim anything resembling mental health. But Coil really are my favorite. They are what I listen to when I work in my studio. And I have a Coil t-shirt that I consider a good luck talisman and wear when I feel particularly stressed out or sad. They inspire exactly this type of ecstatic, pathologically intense fandom in their followers. For this blog post, I’ll be leading you through some of my favorite songs by the band.

Balance had long suffered from alcoholism and drug abuse, which contributed to his untimely death. Since we started with news of his death, here is “Heartworms,” where he reflects self-deprecatingly on his addictions, intoning “there’s too much blood in my alcohol.” (Also I stole the name of my drawing blog from a lyric in this song: “Ghosts vomit over me.”) An enterprising YouTuber has added a super 8 short by Derek Jarman for visuals:

I first heard Coil when I was a teenager and a big fan of industrial music. I loved Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Pigface, and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. Originally, I had picked up their cd, Love’s Secret Domain, because I’d buy anything Wax Trax put out. It came out in 1991, so I must have been 13 or 14 since I didn’t buy it too long after it had been released. That record soundtracked much of my high school years, from toothy teenage blowjobs to acid comedowns watching the dancing patterns of my bedsheets, and numerous late night sessions hunkered over my journal writing bad poems and drawing cute boys. I remember playing their track “The Snow” on repeat. It is now a veritable classic of early 90s house music, albeit still somewhat anomalous for the genre. Here is the “Answers Come in Dreams II” remix from “The Snow Ep”:

Love’s Secret Domain was their “dance” record and showed the band playing with sounds, rhythms, and other signifiers of acid house. Remember the title of the record is Love’s Secret Domain—LSD, get it? Here is “Windowpane,” an ode to altered states of consciousness. A good friend once told me he found the song terrifically boring, but I can’t get enough of it. The same friend also recently pointed out to me that I share my birthday with lysergic acid diethylamide. How did this go unnoticed for thirty-two years? Anyway, in the video, Balance dances like a latter-day shaman in the Mekon River in Thailand, presumably under the effects of this famous chemical:

The album cover alone captured my imagination: a fiery red penis sporting blue bird wings and spurting semen into a psychedelic storm of reds and oranges. A few stray images emerge in the background: a skeleton, an eyeball, a pentagram, the hand of Fatima. Unfurling along the bottom of the image is a ribbon emblazoned with the phrase: “out of light cometh darkness.” It is a painting by Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound.

The mixture of the occult, psychedelia, and dark homoeroticism in the imagery gets at the core of their sound, which was otherwise mutable and generally difficult to classify in more specific terms than “experimental” or “post-industrial.” For instance, their music was based in electronics, making use of synths and samplers, but they also brought in collaborators to play guitar, hurdy gurdy, and didgeridoo. And while Balance’s voice—by turns warmly sensual, gravely poetic, and viciously hysterical—was an integral part of Coil, they also put out a number of instrumental records.

Scatology (1984) and Horse Rotorvator (1987) are the other two essential Coil records. The latter, their first proper record, is a true classic of the industrial genre. Along with Throbbing Gristle’s “Discipline,” songs like “Panic” and “Solar Lodge” on this record laid the blue-print for the industrial from the late 80s and early 90s that I loved so much at the time. Scatology is a concept record about excrement and all things anal. The cover of the record shows youthful ass cheeks framed by an inverted cross, and the black sun—an alchemical concept that reappears throughout their discography—at the bottom of the image could certainly also be read as an asshole. But the band is not only being aggressive about their presentation of homosexual desire; their interest in excrement is also alchemical: shit transmuted to gold. The alchemical concept is related to their approach to sound, manipulating rudimentary noise and samples into cathartic, trance music. It goes the other way too, such as the clarinet in “In The Heart Of It All,” which sounds like a painfully expiring sea mammal:

Coil’s cover of “Tainted Love”, the closing track on Scatology, slows the song down to an oppressive dirge, transforming it into a lament about the emergent AIDS epidemic. The band released the song as a 12” in 1985. All profits were donated to an AIDS charity, and it was actually the first AIDS benefit musical release. Here’s the fantastic video, which features Marc Almond as the angel of death:

Coil began incorporating folk and jazz elements on their next full-length, Horse Rotorvator, helping usher in the nascent “apocalyptic folk” movement along with Current 93, Death in June, Sol Invictus and others, although their sound is really too eclectic on this record to fit neatly into that category. The specter of Pier Paolo Pasolini weighs heavily on this record, whether in the Salo-like imagery of “Circles of Mania” or their dedication to the director, “Ostia (The Death of Pasolini),” in which they find a resonance in Pasolini’s murder with Aztec sacrifice. The queer auteur and radical is “killed to keep the world turning.” The shrill string arrangements are by Jim Thirlwell of Foetus. The following video was recently made by Sleazy for a new Criterion edition of Salo.

Themes of sacrifice, apocalypse and sexual violence dominate Horse Rotorvator. They are certainly in the fore on “The Anal Staircase,” which is based around a sample of Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring.” The liner notes to the record include visionary prose about the four horsemen fashioning a gigantic machine with their jaw bones in order to “plough up the waiting world.”

After Love’s Secret Domain, Coil began work on a follow-up, Backwards. Basic tracks were laid down at Trent Reznor’s New Orleans studio, but the project’s completion was endlessly deferred while the band willfully sank into obscurity, putting out a series of limited edition and subscription-only releases that were often driven by occult concepts. For instance, they released EPs for each of the solstices and equinoxes, collaborated with an extra-terrestrial intelligence they dubbed ELpH on “Worship the Glitch,” and created a record of ambient tones to facilitate time travel, “Time Machines.” They’d long been releasing similar records with magickal intentions. Their first release, “How to Destroy Angels,” was composed of ritual gong music for the “accumulation of male sexual energy.” My favorite is probably “Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil” from 2000 in which the band wages a war of magical attack on the Western culture of excess with vicious spasms of electronic noise. It literally sounds like your eardrums are getting electrocuted.

In 1999 and 2000, Coil released two subscription-only records, Music to Play in the Dark Vols. 1 & 2, in which they turned their attention to lunar, “feminine” energies. Although the first three records are rightly considered their classic trilogy, these two discs are hands-down my favorites and get the most play on my stereo. They are both somber, nocturnal records, as their name suggests. Balance mainly speaks while synths burble twinkle, surge and simmer. “Red Birds Will Fly Out Of The East And Destroy Paris In A Night” sounds like Tangerine Dream scoring the end of the world. “Broccoli,” probably my favorite track on the first volume, reflects on mortality and the turnover of generations.

I’ve long obsessed over the track “Where Are You?” on the second volume. This particular lyric has haunted me for several years: “Poor little ghost boy / Let me be your human toy.” I have felt Balance as a presence in my apartment and my studio in the past, and an ex of mine believed that Balance attempted to possess him while we were having sex once, blaming me for experimental rituals I was conducting around our place. Whether due to a willfully hyperactive imagination or not, such supernatural connections to artists via their artworks are in keeping with Balance’s own relationships to certain of his heroes. Balance believed, for instance, that he was able to communicate with the 20^th century occultist, Austin Osman Spare, through his paintings, which he collected.

In the early 00s, Coil began playing a series of live shows internationally. They hadn’t performed live save a handful of shows in their earliest days. It is apparent from their various live discs and the ample footage available on YouTube that they were ferocious on stage. I’ll sign off with another of my absolute favorites, “What Kind Of Animal Are You?” I’m a snow leopard, by the way.

About the poster: Elijah Burgher is an artist and writer based in Chicago, IL. He has most recently exhibited in a solo show at Shane Campbell Gallery in Oak Park, IL and a two-person exhibition at Peregrine Program in Chicago, IL. He will exhibit work in group shows at Johalla Projects in Chicago and Envoy Enterprises in New York this summer. He maintains a hybrid studio wall/magick diary blog at http://ghostvomit.blogspot.com/. Burgher co-founded and co-edited the now-defunct art publication BAT. He has written reviews and essays for ArtUS and several small art publications in Chicago, as well as contributed writing to Art:21′s guest blog. He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, and a BA from Sarah Lawrence college in 2000, where he split his credits amongst Literature, Visual Art, and Cultural Anthropology.

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SMELLS LIKE A MOVIE STAR

Caroline Picard

Celebrities always line supermarket check out lines, always peering at you from glossy magazines dedicated to the torrential madcap folly of their lives. Their faces, bodies, lifestyles wallpaper not just culture but also the basic practice of obtaining foodstuffs. The ubiquitous presence of persona/brands like Jennifer Aniston, Johnny Depp etc., reinforce particular moirés about success, beauty and sexuality. Where repetition and familiarity elicit desire, the repeated surface of the celebrity remains the poster child of consumer society, reinforcing the criteria with which non-celebrities (that’s us) measure their own legitimacy, accomplishment and worth. Celebrity provides a filtered perspective through which we view and interpret immediate experience, history and cultural production. The celebrity exemplifies a model for success which, while applauding the individual in an immediate sense, further stabilizes predominant hierarchical structures of society. To consider the influence such a model has on the contemporary art world is of particular interest because of its function as an historically transgressive and transformative force in culture.

Despite the art world’s (partially self-inflicted) reclusiveness, it has an inextricable relationship to the economic market. That relationship is no doubt reinforced by the ever-increasing number of art students who graduate from secondary institutions and, understandably, expect their respective art practices to afford some semblance of a “career.” The very idea that one’s status as art marker can be ‘taught’ is already far from the modernist perspective of artist as a vessel of inspiration.  Similarly the sense of the struggling, starving, or “crazy” Van Gogh type-artist also feels old hat, a dusty model which, while adopted by some, nevertheless has been replaced by a new concept, i.e. artist as entrepreneur. Today the artist is expected to negotiate practical obligations in the world, she is encouraged to make a website, to show up on time, to write courteous letters to gallerists, and even develop—consciously or not—a public persona. While I tend to prefer the latter attitude of art as ‘learnable’ (because as a learnable occupation it is denied some of its precious mysticism), it is all the more difficult to see how art can provide new ways of thinking if its modus operandi is dependent on the closed system career-ism of work-as-commodity.

Negotiating the pressures of financial stability places any artist in the midst of a hyper-personal process in which one must decide where to locate oneself and one’s practice. That decision, deliberate, accidental or by absentia is unavoidable. Yet also the decision is bound between two poles: one either works with the system of economy or against it. One either makes ‘goods’ (i.e. paintings, films etc,) or non-goods (i.e. washing dishes as a form relational practice), either a non-profit or a for-profit. Neither pole provides a real sense of agency for both are dictated by the criteria of the market, defined with or against predominant modes of success and, at least in the case of LLC’s vs. 501c3s, in prescriptive terms that not only dictate the agenda of a given space but also ideas of ownership. In this essay, I hope to explore the ways in which those play a part in artwork, focusing on two films about Revolutionary France and the more contemporary work of Doug Aitken and Francis Alys, before making an attempt to shift the paradigm of thought such that we might see at least conceptualize a new trail head—a path that goes through and beyond the closed system of canonical legitimacy. One, perhaps, incongruous with celebrity.

I.

Recently, I saw Rohmer’s 2001 film The Lady and The Duke, a film that takes place around The Reign of Terror, describing the way in which personal relationships shift during times of political upheaval. Having shot the entire film in front of a blue screen, each scene takes place within a highly elaborate, period, Trompe l’oeil stage—the handiwork of Jean-Baptiste Marot. Outdoor scenes evoke soft-wash vintage postcard paintings from the time, and the figures within them are still at first, like dolls, before suddenly coming to life with the pan of a camera. Interior scenes also take place on “stage,” where old historic rooms were recreated to embody and contextualize a reenactment of history.  Those interiors stand like residential museums, alive only for the dialogue of characters. Even the lacy detail of costumes was recreated via painting and digital effect. That self-aware staging calls attention both to our relationship to historical events and film as a medium of investigation. The Lady and The Duke seems to argue that our understanding stems from an active and artificial recreation of situations versus a passive and perhaps more “true” understanding of the events themselves. And yet the allure of the camera, the deliciousness of each object, placed just so in the frame, the liberty one presumes as a contemporary so-and-so looking back, affords a tremendous sense of luxury and power. Yet the self-acknowledged device of staging checks that luxury. Our ideas of history stem almost entirely from the decorations (frames, paintings, rugs, furniture) of a given time, and artifacts—text pieces, letters, journals: mediated instances of experience. It is impossible to grasp the reality of historical conflict.

Where his sets confess the artifice of the film, Rohmer nevertheless tries to overcome that apology, resuscitating the conflict of socio-political strife by focusing on a memoir from the times, Journal of My Life During the French Revolution. The main character is an English woman, Grace Dalrymple Elliot, an aristocrat whose royalist tendencies increase as those she is close to are executed. She represents a kind of humanist, with unabashed loyalty, particularly for the King and Queen. Well-educated, articulate, powerful, single, she nevertheless has servants, wears satin dresses, hats, gloves, and conducts her life in a series of parlor meetings with various political figures who, like her, are navigating the rapid changes of their socio-political context. Robespierre makes a few appearances. As do heads on stakes, the rabble, the idealist, the reformist. What is intriguing is how Rohmer captures the difficult and perhaps unnatural balance between political beliefs and human affection. The Duke, bound by pressures of his own political party, condemns his cousin and King to death. Elliot, a former lover and great friend, takes down the Duke’s portrait by way of response. She describes the day of the King’s execution as the darkest day of her life. Nevertheless, her friendship with the Duke endures, pointing to the mutual respect each guards for the other. It is that respect, ultimately, that guides them through the helpless complexity of social change.

In the political sphere, these individuals have little power, like many of his peers; the Duke is bound by way of obligation to the people and other vague political figures, in such a way as to eventually condemn himself. Elliott, similarly, remains a small cog in the greater machine of society, powerless to either save or convict herself. It is providence that saves her, a haphazard force which, ultimately, has almost nothing to do with her political position—what stands in direct conflict to the terrific and terrifying energy of a new democracy.

I couldn’t help but compare Rohmer’s version to Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Equally rich in color and setting, the sympathy and context for the main character is nevertheless vastly different. Antoinette is a young woman cast into a situation over which, Coppola seems to argue, she has no control. Perhaps the funniest moment is when Antoinette passes from Austrian territory into France. She is forced to undress in a kind of ritual shedding of her old country/loyalty. She is forced to leave her dog behind. A nurse maid insists, taking it from the young Queen. It’s the first time that Kirsten Dunst speaks and suddenly after the silent solemnity of old settings (a kingdom, a carriage, a ball gown), the Hollywood starlet says something to shatter the illusion of the past, calling out with an American accent, (I can’t remember the name of the dog but) “Dingbell.”

Coppola’s Antoinette finds power in fashion, cakes, the ability to spend money and lose herself in social gatherings. In Coppola’s vision, Antoinette appears a rock star, subject to the structure of royalty which she has no choice but to inhabit. Her frivolity is a kind of rebellion, with the Clash playing in the background—the film itself is more suited to a music video.

In contrast to Rohmer, Coppola’s view of the times feels more America. Insensitive to the intricate depth of a country’s aristocratic history, she seems to identify with Antoinette, revealing more about Coppola’s own position of celebrity; using the surface of French history to describe the pangs of a Hollywood Temple. (i.e. Coppola was born into a dynasty that comes with its own unavoidable responsibility. Nevertheless, that dynasty is one belonging to a very young country and is situated in the simulacra world of film.) To Coppola, Antoinette is just a girl, lost in a sea of too much money and the pressures of public performance. Disconnected from the weight of history and prominence, Antoinette becomes herself a surface. A petty heroine. Someone, perhaps, more in league with the “One Dimensional Woman” that Power addresses in her work of the same name.

Providing clear and reasoned insight into the pitfalls of contemporary feminism–a title that, according to Power, further commodifies the woman, making her values complicit with consumerism such that the contemporary woman celebrates her independence via purchasing power and decadent selfishness. “I think there’s a very real sense in which women are supposed to say ‘chocolate’ whenever someone asks them what they want,” (Power, p. 37). Rather than fulfill herself, however, the contemporary feminist further distances herself from herself, her body, her peers. “They, the breasts, and not their ‘owner,’ are the center of attention, and are referred to with alarming regularity, as completely autonomous objects, much as one would refer to suitcases or doughnuts. Constantly fiddled with, adjusted, exposed, covered-up or discussed, contemporary breasts resemble nothing so much as bourgeois pets: idiotic, toothless, yapping dogs with ribbons in their hair and personalized carrying pouches.” Much like Antoinette’s feet. Her wigs. Her ennui. Coppola’s Antoinette is far away from herself, it seems. The sort of woman who inhabits scenes as a picturesque object, pretty and pink; who levy’s her power through sexual exploits, drunkenness, and, ultimately a half-conscious abnegation: She says from her balcony to a torch-wielding rabble, “Let them eat cake.”

Rohmer meanwhile presents a woman on the edge of aristocracy. An expatriate (it’s interesting that Coppola, as an American, chooses someone so central to French history, while Rohmer as a Frenchman, chooses an expatriate peripheral to the cause), Elliot nevertheless exerts constant influence on her surroundings, making deliberate decisions, discussing politics with great awareness and clarity. Elliot is connected to a sense of consequence. She is more powerful than Antoinette, despite the powerlessness she struggles with (i.e. that she is not in control of the world in which she lives, that those she cares about are being executed, that the removal of a portrait is the physical scope of her influence, even that she loves and admires a ruling class). Ultimately, Elliot’s articulate grace elicits more sympathy for Marie Antoinette (whom we never meet in Rohmer’s film) than Kirsten Dunst does as her punk rock embodiment. Just as Elliot’s counterpoint, The Duke, evokes profound sympathy for the pitfalls of democratic idealism.

Both films investigate the surface, just as both explore the decadence of setting and stage, the impregnable fortress of history and yet Coppola’s becomes an homage to the disassociated celebrity, celebrating the pangs of privilege suffered without choice, where one is drawn to sympathize with the beautiful party and decadence that, like that Titanic, will soon end. Rohmer, meantime, embraces the post-modern condition in another way, drawing out from it the spectre of human complexity—providing, perhaps the beginnings of an antidote to surface. That is: while admitting the artificiality of his depiction, he resurrects the human condition within those historical settings, teasing out the complexity of lives thereby contained.

II.

I found myself thinking about the relationship between celebrity, film and contemporary art once more when I saw Doug Aitken speak at the Art Institute. Over the course of his talk he went through the development of his practice, starting with his latest film, a story about an old man who’s’ sense of reality unravels. The film is impeccable, glossy and glistening color-rich images, perfectly calculated and shot, the effect of the production value alone makes Aitken’s aesthetic contribution undeniable, a pleasure to experience, to be “wowed” by. And yet the impact of that “wow” was what made me suspicious—because it seemed so complicit with the expectations of commercial, artistic success.

Like artists of old, he too is a monument maker. Aitken has made four-story kaleidoscopes with mirrors set overtop at forty-five degree angles that follow the sun. The interior mirrors reflect an ever-changing (and no doubt, astounding!) abstract of the city inverted. He has also designed buildings sheathed in television screens featuring videos of the ground that existed before the building’s construction. It makes the building itself look invisible, and Aitken seemed to feel, was a way to create land art without devastating the land it incorporated.  The building reminded me of a walk I took with a friend who told me that militarists had devised “invisible cloaks,” shields one could wear which reflected its surroundings digitally, like a chameleon—they almost worked perfectly (according to this friend, whom I realize is not the most reliable source). We of course made endless jokes about how a) cool a cloak of invisibility would be and b) dangerous. Seeing Aitken’s buildings, I remembered that imagined cloak. I suppose because some of his sonic installations use technology divined by militarists. The tools he uses to create seductive, aesthetic environments subjugate the viewer, whether those tools are cinematic devices or relational military speakers installed in a white room to create perfect and impenetrable silence. I wonder, here, if Aitken isn’t subtly critiquing that process of seduction, making flashy mouments that astonish, while using dangerous materials.

The famous people he uses in his films—Keiffer Sutherland, Cat Power, Tilda Swinton—themselves are emblematic of a lifestyle. A lifestyle no doubt coveted by any number (if not all?) of the citizens of the world. Why wouldn’t someone in America—not to mention someone from a third world country—desire such power as that which he wields in the execution of his fancy? His evident proximity to known celebrities, symbols of his own status in the world, whereby those known quantities of Movie Star are not simply people, but signs.

In contrast, it’s interesting to consider Francis Alys who places himself in an entirely other context. Again, perhaps like Coppola, Aitken simply suffers from an inborn American-ism—one invested in larger, unconsciously self-centered, gestures. Meanwhile, Alys lives in Mexico city, cultivating his own persona (accidentally or otherwise) on a small scale, walking through a city with magnets tied to his shoes, pushing a block of ice over the course of a twelve-hour walk until the ice melts, or, even, chasing small tornados.

There is something I find more subversive in Alys’ work, precisely for its smallness. In a world where everyone is clamoring to get attention, building taller and taller skyscrapers all the time trying to make more and more and more money to accomplish more and more, to leave a deeper mark on the surface of history, Alys seems quiet, like a spider, building a very small web. His work appears like a wink, gratifying to witness, precisely because it would be so easy to miss.

That is not to suggest that Alys is the solution to the art-star market. Like any and all of us, he too is invested in the economic structure of art and persona as commodity. It just so happens that his persona has become a marketed whisper. Nevertheless, it is perhaps a beginning. Nevertheless, and with admitted bias, I am comforted by its human scale.

III.

I happened onto a conversation recently in which someone, in one of those rare instances of off-handed academicism, supposed the Copernican Revolution to be the most significant revolution in the history of humanity. In it, humanity’s concept of its context shifted dramatically from the Ptolemaic system (in which the earth is the center of the universe) to we now take for granted, that the sun is the center and the earth orbits around it. I want to strain for a similar perspectival shift. Just as the Copernican revolution did nothing to change the physical conditions in which we live, it impacted the theoretical identity of humanity. Similarly, the solution, it seems to me, is not in a rejection of the current system, but rather a new sense of its structure; a way to assume a new position.

That inkling came to me again when I came upon The Divine Horsemen. There Maya Deren mentions that according to the Haitians, when adding two and two, the action of addition is itself an additive principle, thus the result of such an equation would be five, not four.

2 + 2 = 5                                 2 + 2 + 2 = 8                      2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 11

The proposition makes sense. It’s actually quite sensible and imagining that one can add two things together with changing the principle units reveals something peculiar about the Western European approach to the world. The founding principles of Western logic are based on the assumption that units can be combined and separated without a trace of that action. It supposes that those units are therefore stable, that the addition is an invisible action—an action without a trace.

You can think about it in terms of the contextuality of art. Supposing that the meaning of a work of art is itself stable and unchanging—a unit; exempt from the accumulation of associative, contextual meaning. Take Rodin’s Thinker, for instance. “At approximately 1am on March 24, 1970, the Cleveland Museum’s version of Rodin’s The Thinker was irreparably damaged by a pipe bomb. The bomb itself had been placed on the pedestal that supported the enlargement and had the power of about three sticks of dynamite.” (click here to read the rest of the article). The museum director had a choice after that—send The Thinker back to be refurbished? To restore the legs, returning the piece to its original wholeness? Or let it remain. Surprisingly, the city was asked to weigh in. Even more surprisingly, they preferred to leave their Thinker damaged. In letting the work remain destroyed, the piece garnered new meaning. Suddenly it’s history is tied to an, albeit anonymous, act of violence—one specific to American history and, most likely, the Vietnam War.

Here too, an action took place with a mathematical character. The legs were lost. What was added was an historical tracing—a mark of trauma and transformation. Suddenly this Thinker has gone beyond the context prescribed by Rodin and the disaffected passage of his work through time. That monument has become contemporary, added to by an action with a value that gloms on to the original unit. It demonstrates the influence of the present on the past, as well as the impossible task of preserving something “as it always was.”

2 – 2 = 1                                                2 + 2 – 2 = 4                                    2 + 2 + 2 – 2 = 7

These last months I have found myself again and again in conversations about the myth of stability and permanence as it manifests in works of art. On the one hand I cannot help but sympathize with the chronic need to refurbish and protect famous works of art. On the other, I also see that the task is ultimately fraught. Similarly I participate in the culture we inhabit, invest heavily in it, and relate to the desire for success and recognition. I read headlines of celebrity life over and over again when buying food. Of late I have accidentally encountered a reality TV show in which B-movie celebrities go to a halfway house to get off drugs (Sober House); in other words I’m as entrenched in my sense of the surface, in my understanding of legitimacy as a codified process, as anyone else. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps there is another strategy to satiate those impulses, a strategy which might perhaps shift, if only slightly, the ever flattening surface of cultural production and dissemination.

A friend mine said, out of nowhere, the other day that he didn’t feel he was the same person he was as a child, or even the same person he was a few years ago. With peculiar earnestness he looked me in the eye and concluded, “The only reason I think I think I am the same person is because I remember things I did when I was someone else.” In this moment too, I feel Deren’s additive principle makes sense.  Like any work of art, we are not the same, just as a public persona cannot simply be dealt out like a stable commodified veneer. Surfaces crack and fall apart; they are not dependable despite our most insistent hopes. The illusion that something, or someone, can be simplified and projected onto a surface, as Coppola’s Antoinette, Aitken’s old man, or his kaleidoscope pattern of New York City reflected—those are dangerous illusions in so far as they evade any sense of consequence or complexity—elements, I feel, are essential to the human condition. Thus, perhaps this additive self can be the beginning of that trailhead, the one easily missed, with small missteps and unobtrusive failures. The robust and generally uncelebrated life—not the wizened fool sitting by the river, but rather the modest cousin who bakes his own bread for family and friends alike, and perhaps in the course of that communion, discovers a new sense of legitimacy, a new means to measure success.

Got a response to this post? Let us know! Email your comments to mail@badatsports.com. We’ll feature thoughtful responses to issues generated by our posts in our Letters to the Editors Feature on Saturdays.

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More Tailgating, Less Curating

Randall Szott

I’m a cook. When I tell people this there are no quizzical looks or sheepish follow up questions. People get it and want to hear more. Sometimes the fact that I have two grad degrees in art makes its way into the conversation and things get awkward. This, to me is a problem, a fundamental problem that I’ve been invited to say a bit about here at BaS. What follows is my highly anecdotal account of why I believe the art world should strive to be more like the culinary world. It is rooted in my experience and obviously suffused with my values. If you don’t share those values (pluralism, flexibility, openness, egalitarianism, inclusiveness, conviviality, approachability, diversity, etc.), find those values misapplied or irrelevant to the context, or if you have had a radically different experience with the art or culinary world then obviously this account will be of questionable value to you. I am talking about the capital A art world – the one that BaS almost exclusively engages itself with – not the immensely diverse “real” art world of sidewalk art fairs, church craft shows, potters in Memphis, painters in Sedona, and the multiplicity of creative artists that work outside the “recognition” of the network of biennials, jet-set curators, international journals, art historians, big city newspapers, and elite colleges/universities.

I went to several art schools as an undergrad, but found them all incapable of or unwilling to answer some fundamental questions about art practice – Why is it important?  Who is it important to? And how does it fit into history, not art history? To put it another way, the schools seemed prepared to teach how to make art, but not why making art mattered to anyone beyond the campus. In fact, most evidence I encountered seemed to imply that very few people felt the type of art being made in art schools in the early to mid 90s mattered at all. For a discipline that prides itself on its capacity for self-reflection and critique, it seemed strange to me that asking what seemed like such obvious questions would be met with such incredulity and would brand me as a testy crank. Maybe I was destined for kitchen work all along given the notorious tempers of cooks/chefs. Maybe art types are the temperamental ones, especially when asked to provide some semblance of proof that what they’re doing matters to anyone beyond their circle of like minded art enthusiasts.

The cooking world doesn’t share this burden. People get it. Now don’t get me wrong, the foodie/wine connoisseur crowd can be as snobbish and condescending as the ArtForum/Sotheby’s set to be sure. But, despite this, what follows is my bullet point summary of why the art world would be better if it was more like the culinary world. To make it easier for myself, I’m going to limit my discussion of U.S. culinary culture as it is the one I know best and some limit in scope is necessary given the length.

Diversity of diffusion

The multiplicity of centers, or points of culinary interest are staggering in culinary culture. That is to say, in contrast to the art world, a much broader cross section of America invites exploration and discovery -  farmstead cheeses of rural Vermont, shrimp and grits of coastal Carolina, the various regional barbecue styles (Memphis, St. Louis, Texas, Carolina, etc.), seasonal Pacific Northwest menus, clambakes and lobster rolls of coastal New England, and on and on and on…You can find great food outside of the major urban centers, food made and consumed with great regional pride by people who do not look to national or international tastemakers for validation. If you want to experience art “that matters,” you have a very limited travel itinerary ahead – Los Angeles, New York, and *maybe* San Francisco or Chicago. Of course you can throw Miami in, but you’ll just be looking at stuff trucked in from the other urban centers.

Participation

Obviously this is related to the previous item. The main thing I’m looking at here is the range of individual participants, the variety of socio-economic classes, educational levels, race, (as per above) regional distribution, age, gender, etc. Essentially everyone cooks, and this means that the pool of available knowledge, approaches and practices is staggering. Because of its integration within everyday life, food opens up conversation rather than shuts it down (see my anecdote above). Of course food is politicized and has immense points of controversy, but if you were to make small talk with someone on a bus, in a taxi, at the gas station, the laundromat, the DMV, or the bank, aside from the weather, what easier point of reference would there be than food? To be able to talk about *something* deeply connected to history, identity, culture with a complete stranger is an amazing thing. Go ahead ask someone what their favorite holiday meal is, or what their grandmother used to cook, or (often funny) about their worst food experience. Then ask them about art and see where that conversation goes.

Star System

Again related to the previous item, is the way in which cooking “stars” figure in popular culture. Mario Battali is a well respected chef within the “high” culture of the culinary world (I use scare quotes because as this section hopes to point out high culture in cooking is not nearly as removed from low, or ordinary culture – unlike art in which they pretend such distinctions have collapsed, but the evidence to support the claim is basically nonexistent), but is also widely known among ordinary people. Let’s contrast this with say, Ann Hamilton whose resume is chock full of pinnacle achievements in the arts, but is basically unknown as a public figure. Perhaps that comparison isn’t fair, Thomas Keller is one of the most highly regarded chefs in the U.S. and remains obscure too. The fact remains though that many highly accomplished professionals in the field of cooking (Anthony Bourdain, Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters, etc.) are known to the public. Thus, the divide between those who are “experts” and those that are not is not nearly as steep at least in terms of a basic who’s who of the field.

Media

Take a quick look at all of the snarky hand wringing going on amongst the art chattering class (and its wannabes) regarding Bravo’s upcoming art reality series to see how important the traditions of rejecting the”masses” and the cult of genius remain in the art world. Reality cooking shows are everywhere and there are very few cries of “that’s not really cooking” or “those aren’t really chefs” among the food crowd. This relaxed, open, and fun orientation is another strength of the culinary world. On Top Chef, truly “top” chefs participate with little fear that it will hurt their credibility with some food intelligentsia. Even on the more campy and flamboyant Iron Chef top tier chefs eagerly embrace the opportunity rather than avoid it to maintain their “serious” cooking practice. Aren’t there oodles of essays about how distinctions between pop culture and art culture have collapsed? Ah, but in the culinary world we have living proof of this, not just some catalog essays and edited academic volumes. Where is the Art Network? Where is Top Artist? Each with accomplished artists participating in pop culture, not just commenting on it, or using it for source material? To continue this line of thinking, where are the copies of ArtForum or frieze at the checkout stand, the dentist’s office, the insurance office, or drug store? I have found Saveur, Gourmet (R.I.P.), Food and Wine, etc. in these places. There is a Food Network whose viewers are not just insiders (critics and chefs), but people like my mom and even my dad. Wouldn’t the art world be well served by having various media that at least approached the broad demographics of food media?

Participation II

Finally, I’ll leave you with a bit about cookbooks and the participatory ethos of the culinary world. One of the most inspiring things I found in my experience as a professional cook (in high end fancy pants restaurants) was the egalitarian attitudes of chefs I worked with. They often looked to street food (“common” cooking) not in irony, not merely as inspiration for their own more “refined” dishes, but as some of the greatest achievements in culinary culture. Most chefs I know believe that there are grandmothers the world over that are equal to, or greater in cooking ability to themselves or are at least capable of creating a few amazing dishes. I have rarely encountered artists who think that a housewife in North Dakota or a construction worker in Mississippi might have something to add to art, or that a sidewalk art fair in Oak Park even might have anything there that would merit attention. Yet, we have someone like the aforementioned Mario Battali releasing the cookbook “Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style” not as a wink wink “gesture,” but out of a real appreciation for, and respect of, the cooking practices of ordinary people. Not only that, but this creative back and forth between highly accomplished professionals in the field and ordinary people happens daily in newspapers, call in shows, street fairs, and cooking demonstrations. We have someone like Rick Bayless issuing cookbooks for you, me, anyone -  to make and alter his recipes. Now I know Fluxus adopted the recipe model a bit, but it is by no means mainstream in the art world. There are community cookbooks, chili cook-offs and other forms of ordinary cooking that chefs look to for crafting recipes. This dynamic, participatory ethos in which school teachers, mechanics, brokers, nail technicians, etc. rub against professional cooks and food critics creates a vibrant, dense, and democratic culture that the art world can’t do anymore than pay lip service to.

Now as I mentioned, this whole line of thinking is predicated on a certain set of values – that cultures are better served by: increased participation, broadly composed publics, egalitarian social relationships, power widely distributed across stakeholders rather than concentrated amongst a few elites, and shared points of contact/vocabularies. Let me also stipulate that there are highly specialized, and elitist practices in the cooking world as well – molecular gastronomy being among them, but this does not change my basic points. I’ll close with one of the major things I’d like to see the culinary world emulate from the art world. To experience the very top tier of cooking is insanely expensive. In the art world, you can stroll into any gallery free of charge. Similarly museums provide access to, and educational programming for, art free of charge (at least on certain days). The culinary world needs to figure out how to replicate this – create “museums” wherein people can taste food for free prepared not only by chefs, but also by home cooks and create programming that contextualizes it within broader historical/cultural currents.The culinary world is ahead on many counts by my estimation, but it is glaringly behind the art world in making its achievements available to those with limited economic resources. I might have veered onto a snarky path in parts of this post, but I truly offer this in the spirit of constructive criticism, and as someone who wants art to be relevant, to be able to talk as readily about it with my neighbors and the folks back in my hometown as I can about cooking. I want people to be as hungry for art as they are for al pastor, dal, pot roast, and fried chicken. That’s a huge, probably impossible ambition, but I’m a romantic through and through -  Bon appétit!

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Where did all the Tweets go? A conversation lost on Twitter

GUEST POST BY ALICIA ELER

Is it easier and more efficient to host conversations on Twitter or Facebook? This was my only question when I began research for this blog post. Things changed when Twitter lost the conversation, which is ironic because the conversation is the entire point of Twitter.

I, @aliciaeler, organized what was to be my first of many conversations about lesbian movies on Twitter. The conversation would begin with tweets from Chicago celesbians @trishtype, the Afterellen.com Blog Editor; lesbian erotic fiction writer @deviantdyke; queer sex blogger @annapulley; freelance writer and bonafide lesbian @jennispinner; and ChicagoNow tattoo blogger/AfterEllen.com music blogger @chubbyjones. Later, we could move to Facebook and try it again. For the Twitter convo, @jennispinner and I came up with the idea to label tweets with hashtag #lezflix. The chat began promptly at 2pm on Tuesday, November 24, 2009, and lasted well over the 10 minutes we had originally planned. Lesbian twitterers from all over the country jumped in.

When I went back to find those tweets a few weeks later, however, they were gone. I even went to my saved search #lezflix on Twitter.com. Nothing.

With my original plan foiled, I realized that I needed to do two things:

1. Figure out how to prevent tweets from getting lost in the future, and

2. Retrieve tweets from the #lezflix conversation using search

For advice, I contacted my social media-savvy friends Leah Jones, founder of Natiiv Arts & Media, a social media coaching business for artists, musicians and writers; Craig Kanalley, Traffic and Trends Editor at Huffington Post and founder of BreakingTweets.com; and Daniel Honigman, Digital Supervisor at Weber Shandwick. I also tweeted and gchatted with Sachin Agarwal, the Operations Lead at OneForty.com, the Twitter App Store.

When I first approached Daniel Honigman with this problem the other month, he suggested two ways to avoid losing tweets: Export the tweets to an Excel spreadsheet post-conversation, or use BackUpIfy.com, a service that backs up your online life (free until January 31). Currently, you can back up Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, Zoho, Google Docs, Photobucket and WordPress. Services in Beta include Basecamp, Gmail (!), Facebook, FriendFeed, Blogger and Hotmail; soon users will be able to back-up YouTube, Xmarks, RssFeed and Tumblr accounts.

Another way to save tweets, says Leah Jones, is to “do a search on search.twitter.com for your hashtag, then subscribe to the results via RSS and Google Reader.” If you do this,  says Jones, “Google will make a database of those tweets for you, and they’ll go onto your Google Reader.”

Unfortunately, it’s too late for the #lezflix conversation. The tweets are gone. What can I do now?

Sachin Agarwal, who spends his days immersed in Twitter at oneforty.com, says that searching for different terms was the only way to retrieve tweets. “You’re searching summize (Twitter search) for the hashtag, and that search index only has a week or so of data.” Instead, he suggests I search for both the hashtag—in this case, #lezflix—and some of the movies talked about during the conversation, rather than searching for the terms #lezflix and Twitter. “Bound,” “Better Than Chocolate” and “Desert Hearts” were the first ones that came to mind. Kanalley echoed that advice, suggesting I search using both Google and Bing.com.

So let the search begin.

Search #1: Searching Google for Twitter #lezflix brought up these results.

These were the first and only tweets to come up:

1. 
   reprizal #lezflix another old one, did anyone ever see the french movie “Entre Nous”? 24 Nov 2009 from Echofon
2. 
   xanontl @aliciaeler re: #lezflix: bound, obviously 25 Nov 2009 from TweetDeck in reply to aliciaeler

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl
Followed by a link to Twitter user @msbutch84.

These three women all joined in the conversation after it began.

Here are the two #lezflix tweets I found on the November 24, 2009, archive of HelloChicago.com, a site that grabs Chicago tweets daily.

@AnnaPulley Is Bound a #lezflix by def? It’s made by two dudes. Can it be a les movie if it’s not written/directed by a female? Posted by jennispinner in Chicago, IL

i just couldn’t get into IBTC – too forced and i love jamie babbitt’s other work so i was so bummed! good soundtrack and effort tho #lezflix Posted by trishtype in Chicago, IL

Similarly, on the hyperlocal front, the site Localtwt.com discovered a #lezflix tweet from Elko, South Carolina.

#lezflix also showed up under the movie Spider Lilies on SeeandTweet.com, a site where users can find Twitter movie reviews, see movie trailers, get movie showtimes, and buy tickets. Unfortunately, when I went to the link that popped up on Google,  I couldn’t find any mention of #lezflix.

Google found my @aliciaeler Twitter streams archived on MixTweet and Twaitter, which I didn’t know I had, and FriendFeed, a service that I set-up to stream my Twitter.

Japanese website Twimpact picked up and translated @annapulley’s tweet about the lesbian sex scene in the film Better Than Chocolate.

Search #2: Searching Bing for Twitter #lezflix

Bing does not compare to Google. Searching for Twitter #lezflix brought up a single tweet from @annapulley.

These two general searches helped uncover a few tweets, and if I wanted to get more specific I would take Sachin’s advice and do a search for #lezflix and the name of a movie (e.g. Bound, Desert Hearts, Better Than Chocolate), or just a search for Ilene Chaiken, creator of The L-Word. In fact, the first search for #lezflix Ilene Chaiken brings up every post on Tumblr that has been tagged with Ilene Chaiken.

Here’s the reality, though: Twitter kills off tweets after two weeks. The time period used to be four months or 1,000 tweets, reports ToThePC. If you want your tweets to stay alive after two weeks—the same time it takes bed bug eggs to hatch into nymphs—back them up before it’s too late.

Interested in learning more about how you can use Twitter? Check out my blog for posts about Twitter users’ reactions to the Health Care Reform Bill, how we won the Maine Question 1 vote on Twitter but lost it in real life, and sizing up Chicago LGBT publications’ Twitter feeds.

About the poster:

Alicia Eler is a writer, art critic and new media art curator. Her work has been published in Artforum.com, Art Papers, Time Out Chicago, Chicago Tribune, Newcity Newspaper, Flavorpill, Kansas City Review magazine, the Windy City Times, and Curve Magazine, among others. She is the Arts & Culture Community Manager of ChicagoNow.com, a network of hyperlocal blogs sponsored by the Chicago Tribune Media Group, and a frequent Tweeter.

Got a response to this post? Let us know! Email your comments to  mail@badatsports.com. We’ll feature thoughtful responses to issues generated by our posts in our Letters to the Editors Feature on Saturdays.

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My Feminism is 80s Teen Movie Flavored

Stacia Yeapanis

Not many people remember the teen movie The Legend of Billie Jean. Expected to be a box office hit in the summer of 1985, it disappointed producers, earning a measly $3.5 million, and has yet to be released on DVD. This movie is why I still own a VCR.

The plot is simple: Billie Jean Davy is a teenage girl from a trailer park, who becomes an outlaw after being involved in an accidental shooting. She goes on the run with her friends and cuts her hair and becomes a celebrity hero seeking justice. The tagline, according to IMDB, is “When you’re seventeen, people think they can do anything to you. Billie Jean is about to prove them wrong.”

I was 7, not 17, when it was first released. I can’t remember exactly when or where I watched it for the first time. I remember that I believed the main conflict was between kids and adults. There’s no doubt the movie was marketed to the MTV generation. The theme song, Invincible by Pat Benatar, had already made it to #10 before the movie was released. I probably related to the movie because I was a kid and because life constantly feels unfair when you’re a kid.

But when I re-watched The Legend of Billie Jean at age 31, it was obvious to me that this overlooked teen movie is about more than a rebellious teen’s sense that her parents aren’t fair because they make her clean her room or get off the phone and do her homework. For me, it’s one of my earliest feminist texts (and a scathing critique of capitalism, but that’s another post). Watching it was like having myself and my experience of the world mirrored back to me. I don’t mean that I’ve ever cut my hair short or been an outlaw or slept at an abandoned mini golf course. I just mean that I must have learned something watching this movie over and over again. And it’s something I value.

The opening sequence is common in many 80s teen movies: a group of carefree teens rides down the highway in a convertible, whooping and hollering. But this is different. The convertible teens are not our protagonists. They are bullies: our first representation of Patriarchy. Billie Jean and her brother are positioned as the disadvantaged. They live in a trailer park, a fact that is emphasized repeatedly. They ride a scooter instead of driving a car. They are poor, while the convertible bullies are probably middle class. One of the boys is taking pictures of Billie Jean. She seems to be enjoying it, or at least, she doesn’t mind it. The use of the camera represents the constant presence of the Male Gaze. The gaze is emphasized in the way Hubie Pyatt, a local bully, harasses them further. He sexualizes Billie Jean by leaning in really close and licking the straw from her milkshake. He feminizes Binx in the way all homophobic jocks from 80s teen movies do: by calling him a faggot. Later, Hubie and his friends continue this harassment by stealing Binx’s Honda Elite and trashing it. This is just the first of many examples how the dominance of Patriarchy can lead to an unethical use of power.

Repairing the scooter will cost $608. Billie Jean goes to the shop owned by Hubie’s father to get the money that is owed to them. The class-based power relations are emphasized once again when Hubie denies his culpability. ”Don’t believe her, dad. She’s from the trailers… She’ll say anything.”

For a moment, it seems Mr. Pyatt will right Hubie’s wrong. He sends his son away and tells Billie Jean the money is upstairs in the safe. Mr. Pyatt’s idle conversation quickly escalates into dangerous territory when he offers to give her the money in exchange for sexual favors.

Luckily Billie Jean manages to escape. This is not a movie about rape. But the possibility of it does emphasize the power discrepancy between Billie Jean and Mr. Pyatt. He is an older, male business owner. She is an impoverished teenaged girl. Billie Jean’s femaleness is equated with her poorness. Both are qualities that the despicable Mr. Pyatt can take advantage of. When he doesn’t succeed in actually raping her, he later does so metaphorically by selling unauthorized merchandise bearing her image for his own profit (reiteration of the male gaze). Although I don’t think that the experience of rape is at all like the experience of have one’s image exploited, both emphasize ways in which our bodies are often the sites of the struggle against Patriarchy.

So when Billie Jean cuts off her long blonde hair, it is a symbolic gesture. It signals a shift in self-identity. Billie Jean has a new way of seeing herself so she changes the way she presents herself to the world. She throws off the trappings of femininity, subverting the Male Gaze that she welcomed in the opening sequence. This gesture brings to mind the image of women throwing their bras and corsets into trashcans in 1968. She gets rid of the clothes that Mr. Pyatt had fingered lecherously saying, “This looks real good on you. Bet you drive them boys crazy, don’t you?” She dons fingerless gloves and parachute pants instead. According to tropes of 1980s teen movies this attire states emphatically I’m not the nice girl you think I am and I’m not gonna let you push me around anymore!

After Billie Jean changes her appearance, she records what amounts to a video manifesto, which she mails to several local news stations.

What’s important here is that she now chooses to record and disseminate her own image. Soon girls all over Corpus Christi, TX have cut their hair off in a feminist sign of solidarity. This is emphasized later when random girls turn themselves into the police, saying they are Billie Jean, and when we see the underground railroad of punk-looking, shorthaired girls, shuttling Billie Jean around TX in their cars so that she can evade capture.

Another striking scene emphasizes the female body as a site of power. The gang has just been involved in a car chase/shoot-out. Right at the moment when I imagine the teenage boy viewers were really enjoying themselves, Putter gets her first period. Considering the menstrual taboo in most teen movies, this is an amazing occurrence. At first everyone thinks she has been shot. When they all realize the mistake, the girls are happy and Binx is grossed out. “You keep quiet, Binx,” admonishes Billie Jean. “It’s wonderful!”

This is a plot device to get Billie Jean worried enough about her friends that she turns them in to keep them safe. But this could easily have been accomplished with the shoot-out alone. The next scene is bizarrely awesome. Putter is wrapped in a huge blanket at the end of a very public pier. Her hair is wet and she appears to be naked, as if she has just bathed in the harbor. Billie Jean is helping her towel off in a very maternal way. Putter looks at her blankly and asks, ”When can I get a diaphragm?” The insertion of such distinctly female concerns, especially ones that are usually absent from mainstream movies, into an action sequence serves as a reminder of what’s really at stake: a woman’s right to do what she wishes with her body.

At the end of the movie, Billie Jean finally confronts Mr. Pyatt directly, calling him out in front of a crowd of potential customers. His attempted rape of Billie Jean is more directly equated with his unethical appropriation of her image for his own financial gain. She gazes at her own image surrounding her. Mr. Pyatt tries to pay her off, keep her quiet. She grasps a handful of bills that he shoves into her hand, staring at them, remembering the last time he tried to give her money for something she wasn’t willing to do.

Mr. Pyatt just doesn’t get it. “You’re the one to blame,” he says. “You’re the one going ‘round, thinking you’re so damn hot.” Even now, he cannot accept any responsibility for his actions, for his misuse of power.

Mr. Pyatt doesn’t get off completely free, as evidenced by the burning of his merchandise, but there’s a tragic sense that he will never really understand what he is guilty of. Patriarchy doesn’t budge easily. Billie Jean herself is different though, and so are all the people who witness the scene. They throw their branded merchandise into the fire, suddenly understanding what it means to have participated in Mr. Pyatt’s exploitation. Even Hubie seems to have learned that his father’s way is not the right way.

Our values come from everything we encounter: our parents, our friends, our teachers, and the texts we read, watch, and hear. There’s no way to prove just what came from where. I’m willing to admit that my memory of early childhood is weak. An exact copy of a movie I watched repeatedly over 20 years ago might only seem to be the origin of my current values, because I can see the circumstantial evidence right before my eyes. Who knows what I actually understood at the time or what the director, writer and actors intended. Whether I learned something about feminism from Billie Jean or whether I’m reading too much into the text, one thing is true. Whenever I witness the continued dominance of Patriarchy, I see Billie Jean in her video manifesto, shaking her clenched fists above her head:

Fair is fair. We didn’t start this. We didn’t mean it to happen. But we’re not giving up ‘til you pay. Fair is Fair.

Out of context, this might sound vengeful. But Billie Jean isn’t out to hurt anyone, and she never allows her righteous anger to steer her into vengeance territory. On a literal level she only wants what is owed to her: the $608 it will take to repair the scooter. No more, no less. But taken as a feminist battle cry, these words are a call to action, a call to stand your ground for what you deserve. Fair is fair.

About the poster:

Stacia Yeapanis is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist and a media fan.  She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2006 and is a member of the Chicago-based artist collective Henbane.

Using strategies of accumulation, collection, appropriation and juxtaposition, Yeapanis explores the emotional, political, and philosophical significance of cultural participation. By creating hybrid works that employ the histories and languages of both popular and fine art culture, she reveals the cultural and personal spaces where these binaries overlap. Yeapanis currently uses embroidery and video to explore how individuals create meaning from mass media products.

Yeapanis’ first monograph was recently published as part of The Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Midwest Photographers Publication Project (Spring 2009). Recent exhibitions include Losing Yourself in the 21^st Century (Atlanta and Baltimore), MP3: Midwest Photographers Project (Chicago) and RE: Figure (Chicago).  Please visit her website at www.staciayeapanis.com.

Got a response to this post? Let us know! Email your comments to  mail@badatsports.com. We’ll feature thoughtful responses to issues generated by our posts in our Letters to the Editors Feature on Saturdays.

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Guest post by Shawnee Barton

Thoughts on Feminism and Poker

The last time I was at the underground poker club on Ashland and Division in Chicago, it was 3 a.m. when I noticed that there was porn on every television in the card room. The porn wasn’t on at 9, 11, or even at 1 a.m, but apparently social conventions left at 3. This club has since been robbed and moved to another location, but when it was still in business, 3 a.m. was also the time when the tiny female server in an even tinier black dress stopped serving cocktails.

I’ve given a lot of thought to what I should wear to work, and by “work” I mean the poker table.   The media clearly rewards female poker players who show cleavage.  If I want to be famous in the poker community, which is a lucrative aspiration, getting my own little black dress would certainly be a shortcut to one measure of success.  Unfortunately though, showing some skin can have consequences at the table.

One of the easiest ways to spot a bluff is to watch someone’s chest to see if the person stops breathing.  People naturally have a freeze/flight/fight response to stress, but because poker players can’t run away or smack the guy across the table, they will often just sit there frozen and hold their breath after bluffing.  Similarly, when people are excited (like when they look down and see pocket aces), the large vein running down the side of the neck pumps blood so hard and fast that you can often see it pulsing from across the felt.  Both of these tells are much more visible on a woman wearing a low cut tank top than on a big guy in a hooded sweatshirt.

Third-wave feminist Jennifer Baumgardner wrote, “For our generation, feminism is like fluoride.  We scarcely know we have it—it’s simply in the water.”  I never even thought about feminism until I started playing poker.   As a kid, I wore jeans instead of dresses and played tag with the boys after school instead of styling my Barbie doll’s hair.  As an adult, my husband and I take turns making dinner and it wasn’t assumed that I would take his name when we married. That’s why sexism can be shock to women like me, who know nothing but equality.

Feminists fought for the right to vote.  Second-wave feminists fought for the ability to work outside the home and for equal pay at their jobs.  But the women of my generation don’t have a cause to unite behind.  We can’t even agree on what contemporary feminism looks like.   The taboo nature of the “feminist” label generates an image of bra-less, man-hating extremism and keeps a lot of women from talking about feminist theory or sexism in the workplace.  Strong young women who might have previously joined a movement must now define their boundaries and values in private.

This process is especially difficult when one’s work place is a casino.  Do I even have a right to expect equality in a casinos or illegal gambling establishments?  I’m not sure that I do.  I don’t offend easily though, so I gladly put up with a lot that a woman in a traditional office might not be willing to. I enjoy most dirty jokes.  I dismiss men’s unflattering comments about their wives as blowing off stream, and I thought it was pretty funny when an old man at my table unzipped his green polyester pants after gorging himself at dinner.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a line though, and when a man at my table crosses it, I put a lot of effort into figuring out if I’m right to feel uncomfortable and how to respond appropriately. Reacting to particularly egregious remarks is easy.  Once, I apologized to the player sitting next to me for shifting around in my chair all night, and he brazenly responded, “Oh you’re a squirmer are you?” I’ve found that in situations like this, direct eye contact coupled with a simple declarative statement carries the most weight.  I steadily and confidently looked at him and said, “That was inappropriate.”  I fight the urge to be cruel or emotional, but I will respond loud enough for the group to hear if I want to send a message to others that there are things I won’t tolerate.

I always feel a calm sense of self after I rightly defend myself, but confrontation puts the rest of the table on edge, which is awkward for everyone and potentially troublesome for my pocketbook.  Guys treasure their fraternal time away from their wives and kids, and even though I might be a moral victor, there’s a good chance that I would be the one not asked back again if a confrontation at someone’s home game made the group uncomfortable.  At a casino, a loose game could easily break up if there was too much tension at the table, since a lot of the easy money comes from weekenders who just want to have some fun.

I know it’s probably hard for the guys I play with to understand my boundaries, because they’re not entirely clear to me.  Sometimes, I respond favorably to the empowerment and attention I get when I’m the only woman at the table, but other times, when a man goes too far, I’m not so nice. If I like you, you can call me “Sweetie” all night long.  If I don’t, I’ll tell you straight up to call me by my name and that words like “Honey” and “Sweetheart” are sexist and dated.

This is obviously hypocritical.  It’s also hypocritical of me to expect equality while using my sexuality to make money.  Once I was playing Pot Limit Omaha on a riverboat casino in rural Indiana.  A drunk old man was sitting to my left, and I let him buy me a drink. I listened to his stories and shot him a few smiles.  Then he started nudging me with his leg every time he had a big hand.  I never asked him to do this, and I never gave him clues about the strength of my hand, but for three hours, if I felt his leg tap I knew he had great cards and I would get out of as many pots as my conscience would allow.  This man certainly wasn’t tipping off the big hairy guy sitting on the other side of him, but because I showed him a little attention, he helped me walk away a winner.

In an ideal world, men would not give me free information simply because I am a woman, and if they did, I would refuse to use it against them.  In this world, I could play poker all day long against terrible players in a smoke-free environment.  Waitresses could wear whatever they wanted and still rake in tons of tip money, and porn would not be required viewing.  But the poker world doesn’t offer training on sexual harassment or gender equality to their “employees”, so I’ll continue to negotiate my boundaries. I will laugh at men’s off-colored jokes because they are funny, not because I feel like I have to.   I will try to look pretty enough that they will want to give me their money, but prudish enough that they hopefully won’t offend me. And if a man does give me free information at the table, he shouldn’t expect me to return the favor…unless he’s really cute.  I’m not perfect, and a handsome face can affect my judgment too.

Shawnee Barton is a Texas born interdisciplinary artist currently living in San Diego.  She completed her MFA in Printmedia at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago where she was a Trustee Scholar.  She received her BFA in Sculpture from Southern Methodist University and participated in the Independent Studio Programme at Slade School of Art in London.  Shawnee has taught courses in both the Photography and Printmedia departments at SAIC.  She has worked as an arts administrator for The Illinois Arts Council, The Palo Alto Arts Center, and and New Langton Arts in San Francisco.  During this past presidential election, Shawnee served on Barack Obama’s National Arts Policy Committee.

When she’s not making art, Shawnee is most likely playing poker.  She finished second in the 2006 World Series of Poker Ladies No Limit Hold’em event, but these days, Pot Limit Omaha is her game.

Visit shawneebarton.com for more info.

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