This is a documentary about vogueing, and the extremely refined and detailed aesthetic sensibilities it reflects, shot in New York City around Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and Harlem in the mid- to late-80s. The city has changed in dramatic ways since then, to say the least.
The characters of the film are complete outsiders with, at the same time, a deep understanding of the world they are outside of. As Terrence Rafferty wrote in The New Yorker, “the material is almost too rich, too suggestive. Everything about the ball culture signifies so blatantly and so promiscuously that the movie induces a kind of semiotic daze.”
It is certainly hard to view human behavior the same way after watching this film. I hope this low-quality version will be interesting enough to inspire you to rent the real thing.
(The video player embed here should allow you to watch all 11 segments of the film.)
The Crystal’s “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)“, caused a storm of protest when it was released in 1962, and its ambiguous sentiment underlies ‘It Felt Like a Kiss’, Adam Curtis’ new film. It is a portrait of America between 1958 and 1965, a period when radical individualism emerged with superficial freedom and underlying entrapment. The film has been conceived of as much as a multi-media art piece, as a TV documentary, the BBC having given Curtis an unusual degree of freedom, possibly because they are not quite sure what to do with him.
Curtis is like the Malcolm Gladwell of film making, there is a nagging doubt that what is being argued isn’t science but the delivery is so masterful and thorough that its utterly compelling. It Felt Like a Kiss looks stunning from the trailer (look out for the full version), but perhaps its rhetoric will elicit similar mixed feelings as inspired the subject. Regardless, Curtis, who creates movies that are like the conspiracy theory films that clog Youtube (except that they produced with intelligence), will no doubt become a web celebrity when his next film, which deals with the Internet itself is released combining the meme like qualities of his format with a self-referential subject.
The BBC, in their infinite wisdom, have regionally restricted everything including trailers of It Felt Like A Kiss, so I am linking to the Guardian. A full version of the film is on Curtis’ web site, but is also UK only (I cannot watch it, because I’m in France).
This film is from 1955. It depicts, or appears to (I have no idea if it’s all a fantasy), a cycling idyll, during a postwar period in England when the bicycle was a working man’s (and woman’s?) transportation, without intended symbolism or activism.
Sport clothing certainly has changed a great deal.
Avid cyclists will also notice the well-executed double paceline, at the start of the second clip. The announcer mentions that a “hard riding” sport cyclist of the time might be expected to cover 100 miles in a day. That figure hasn’t changed much, and I’m not too surprised. Aside from a major reduction in weight, the addition of more gears, and the removal of fenders the bicycles closely resemble modern ones (in fact, I suspect these bicycles might be a bit more comfortable, if heavier, than their modern equivalents). Then as now, a hard-riding cyclist might well cover 100 miles on a weekend club ride. These bicycles would have been all-steel, made relatively locally, in Birmingham rather than China. Many here are three-speeds; all have fenders.
My one hesitation in posting this film is that probably most of its irony is probably going right over my head. I’m sure David can provide some insight into the accents, the places, and other British detail that is, typically, lost on me.
A short film made in the early 1950s about the elevated rail line that traveled from the base of Manhattan, up the Bowery and 3rd Avenue, to Gun Hill Road in the Bronx.
New Yorkers, how many places do you recognize as they zoom by? What brewery was that on 3rd Avenue?
The characters are an arty type, a drunk, a little girl, a young couple, and the drama or plot, such as it is, revolves around a nickel stuck in the wooden floorboards of the train (also notice the padded seats). The main characters here are really the subway and the city.
The first episode from the mammoth 14 hour documentary about America’s Civil Rights Movement. Further parts here.
I don’t like politics, patriotism or politicians, but just once in a while something happens that renders me cynicismless.
Who would have thought that less than a lifetime after American apartheid, less than a decade after someone called Osama became America’s most feared individual and 5 years after America went to war against someone called Hussein, a black man called Barack Hussein Obama would claim the White House? As a marketing challenge, it would have seemed impossible and that is why this is a triumph of truth over fiction.
But it is much more than that, not since Rome, when racism was traditionally directed against Northern Europeans, has someone of African decent been the most powerful person in the world (Rome had a Libyan Emperor).
The tragic news is that poor people in America, in places like Detroit, where the median house price is less than $10,000 are about to feel the devastating affects of a brutal recession. Just when there seemed to be hope, some people might turn to hopelessness and then to anger. The recession had nothing to do with Barack Hussein Obama. I suspect that will be an even bigger challenge for the truth.
This film is interesting because it has all the superficial appeal of FEBL conspiracy theory junk, but is actually pretty good. The charts are genuinely illustrative and the infomation density reasonable and logical. The premise – that debt is America’s biggest problem is plausible, and logically argued.
It took me ages to figure out what the nagging problem I have with it is, and unfortunately I can’t sum it up in a sound bite. The train of objection goes something like this:
Film says: America has culture which creates debt.
Film says: America’s debt burden will reach levels where it has no control over its destiny.
Film says: America’s creditors are not natural allies.
Film says: US creditors can dictate what America does by threatening to dump dollar.
Film says: America dumped pound to dictate what UK and France did in Suez.
Film says: America needs leadership.
The last point is the fallacy. I would argue that ironically what America actually needs is weak leadership.
Here is the problem.
Like a scientific experiment which seeks a particular outcome, there will always be a train of thought that leads, seemingly rationally to an apocalyptic scenario if you look for it.
America’s creditors will not let it run up a $50 trillion debt – the margin call will happen sooner, and may already have happened.
Decline of Empire tends to be long and drawn out, and quite often the society left is tolerable and intact.
America will likely be the cultural center of the world for a while after it has ceased to be the economic one (It will all be over before while fat lady still sings, if you like).
In other words it will be bad, but not that bad, unless…
America ends up in a large conflict.
History suggests America will go to war, jingoistically and come back capitulated. This is what happened to Europe in WW1 and WW2. This would have to be a much larger war than Iraq and Afghanistan, although if it happens, it will undoubtedly take place in the Middle East.
I would argue, that strong leadership will more likely lead America into war, what America needs is weak leadership so that it can naturally decentralize and the more successful areas survive while it transitions into a different country. America’s biggest danger is not the people or the place, but the idea.
Films like this assume that all that a country has to do is find a sustainable model of existence and everything will work out fine. Empires do not need to be sustainable – they profit from other poorer parts of the world. You cannot have the kind of lifestyle that America has and it be sustainable, it is pointless to look for it. The distribution of wealth will never be flat, but a bell curve and what will happen is that someone else will sit on the right of the bell curve.
Interestingly this implies that China will never have the kind of dominant middle class culture that America has, unless it is geographically specific, because there are too many Chinese to fit into the right hand of the bell curve.
I have previously posted links to almost all of Adam Curtis’ superlative documentary series apart from this, which examines how the memory of the Second World War was manipulated and changed during the Cold War, in various countries and to suit political ends.
Curtis’ documentaries are always worth watching, they fulfill the instinctive craving that humans have for conspiratorial drama while remaining intelligent, a patently difficult task considering the paucity of other examples. To be fair, Curtis’ pieces are less about secretive cabals than unabashed manipulation through political spin, in an era of manufactured consent.
Despite being a fan of Curtis’ films, I have a problem with the core intellectual premise than envelopes almost everything that he has done. Not only are there few of the secret cabals of the conspiracy theorists that Curtis outshines, which would be like trying to herd tigers (its difficult enough to organize ordinary people, let alone powerful ones with large egos), there is no need for manufactured consent on the scale of what Curtis alleges.
Curtis’ argument is by design, that people are manipulated deliberately. This is something that I would argue is an example of teleological illusion, the hardwiring of human brains to see a creator in everything. If we turn the chain of cause and effect around the other way, then consent isn’t so much fabricated by others, but self-emergent, fabricated by personal desire. Since this requires far less effort, it is more likely to happen most of the time.
The counter argument is that manipulation clearly exists in the real word, from totalitarian propaganda to the seemingly banal world of advertising. The rebuttal is therefore a bit more subtle: that the evolutionary niche that allows for the survival of such things as advertising in a society, and the subsequent manipulation of instinct and desire is actually a product of that desire and driven by it.
This has different implications. Unlike undesirable political manipulation, if the marketplace for distortion of reality is created by us, and if we overcome our irrational desires through reason, it will go away.
We create a fiction to feed our desires and this is a more powerful force than the standalone manipulation comprising manufactured consent, which in turn is more likely than active conspiracy.
In other words, the real world is controlled by Self-delusional Consent.
After WWII, which Britain had fought with American weapons while being supplied with American food, the UK was heavily in debt and on the brink of bankruptcy while the US economy was booming. The US demanded repayment for the wartime loans and so John Maynard Keynes went to Washington to ask for an $8billion bailout. He was refused, but given a loan of half the amount on condition that made the US dollar the new reserve currency. This loan was only paid off in 2006.
What does this have to teach us about today? In the details, not very much, but in the big picture view, it says a lot about how we might expect creditors such as China and Japan to behave towards the US, now that dollar priced hegemony may be ending. The current strength of the dollar is a panic move and prefaces an increasingly likely collapse, during which the US will be at the mercy of Asia.
If you want to get really spooked consider this:
“Victor Shih, a specialist in Chinese central banking at Northwestern University, said that when he visited the People’s Bank of China for a series of meetings this summer, he was surprised by how many officials resented the institution’s losses [on dollar assets].
He said the officials blamed the United States and believed the controversial assertions set forth in the book “Currency War,” a Chinese best seller published a year ago. The book suggests that the United States deliberately lured China into buying its securities knowing that they would later plunge in value.”
I live two hundred yards or so from the New York Stock Exchange, and use the gym next door. Since last October, there have periodically been camera crews outside, recording the slow motion implosion of the financial sector. But this morning, a bright sunny day with a clear blue sky there was no indication at all of the catastrophic events that were occurring to the financial system. Despite the fact that by this evening, the NYSE was practically flood lit.
Bloomberg today ran a slightly melodramatic piece that said that this was one of those days where ‘you remember where you were when…’. Well, I was outside the stock market, when the securities business was becoming extinct, and you wouldn’t have been able to tell it from any other day.
Although the stock market crash of 29 was a far more rapid, severe and dramatic affair, the real drama played out over a decade as the inertia of the effects of capital markets spilled into what even Greenspan calls ‘the real economy’. If you look closely at the footage, over and over again, I suspect that the 1929 crash appeared far less dramatic than people suggest now, even if the effects were severe.
Two brands have dominated the history of Scooters: Lambretta and Vespa.
The larger and more decorative Lambretta is often considered more desirable for vintage scooter enthusiasts, however, I have always preferred the minimalist simplicity of the snail-like Vespa from the early 60s, which seems to better capture the spirit of modernism rather than Mod.
This documentary traces the history of Viaggio and Innocenti scooters from post war Italy to mid 60s Britain. It has some particularly great period footage from the 50s.
The fact that the US space program was kicked off by a Nazi who was let off because he was useful was made famous by Tom Lehrer. However the comparison between these two films rams the point home.
At top is color film from 1944 showing Von Braun as a Nazi, testing the V2.
And a Walt Disney space series from 1955, where Von Braun himself talks about space rockets.
Worth linking to, even if there is no embed, a 20 minute, bleak, prescient, profile of Georgia from 2004.
“After the dramatic ‘Rose Revolution’ that saw him to power, will Saakashvili be able to unify his country?
The hardest tasks still lie ahead. Vast swathes of the country are outside his control. Having claimed independence, they answer to no one. Everywhere you turn in South Ossetia are signs of Russian influence. The police and soldiers wear Russian uniforms, cars have Russian numberplates and the region even runs on Russian time. But technically South Ossetia is part of Georgia. Saakashvili is doing his best to win back their support but any invasion would surely be bloody.”
I seems like the Russian invasion of Georgia is the inevitable result of 2 variables: natural resources and union.
Russia feeling it needs to be aggressive against splinter states to prevent fragmentation of other self identifying enclaves; and protecting access to oil routes. From the US Civil War to Iraq this is a feature of most conflict.
A documentary about the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. A lot has changed since then and one can’t help but wonder if prosperity leads more easily to freedom than protest.
“Michael Kloft’s documentary on the history of Nazi television…As early as the ‘thirties, a bitter rivalry raged for the world’s first television broadcast. Nazi Germany wanted to beat the competition from Great Britain and the U.S. – at all costs.”
Spiegel TV has tracked down rare Nazi TV footage, complete with everything from bizarre cabaret acts to interviews with people like Albert Speer. Pop culture done by Nazis, the banality of showbiz evil.
“When I posted the clip from True Stories of David Byrne deadpanning his way through the history of Texas, I didn’t realize that it would be YDA’s last real post. But if pressed to choose a closing statement, I’d be hard-pressed to select something more appropriate to this blog’s sensibilities.”
An exhaustive and information rich series of documentaries made in 1992 when oil prices were low enough for a level headed look at the history of oil. Based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book, of the available documentaries on the subject, this is the one to blow the dust off and insert into the virtual VCR.
This is the first part of six in a documentary series about the Yugoslav War. Made in 1995, the year that Bosnian-Serb General Mladic’s troops marched 8,300 Bosnian men and teenage boys out of Srebrenica, and executed them, some burned alive and tortured. Armed UN Peace Keeping soldiers watched them pass.
Despite the demands that Serbia should turn over Mladic as a precursor for eventual entry into the European Union (token efforts at complying including a 1M euro reward, were made by the Serbian government), in 2008 the ratification process was started anyway, although nobody seems to know the status and Kosovo’s independence has flared up bestial Serbian nationalism again. The whole story is making a farce of the EU.
There has been some criticism about the accuracy of translation, however, this series would be in my list of top ten documentaries of all time, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It unravels the mechanism of the sordid path of human conflict, from nationalism to genocide, like no other film before or since. It is the film that was never made about the holocaust.
As with the fictional ‘around the world in 80 days’ this 5 month 10 part odyssey made in 2005, includes a variety of modes of transport, exotic locations food and cultures – all to find the world’s 80 principal treasures. The list, of course, is suitably maverick and non-cliche for it to be absolutely fascinating. Chosen by Dan Cruickshank who is a personal favorite architectural historian, this is a must for architecture fans.
I’m posting this in time for the publicity bandwagon surrounding Indiana Jones and the Blah of Blah, because Angkor Wat is everything that an India Jones setting should be: a giant, alien looking ruin in the middle of the Jungle, encased in slithering tree roots. Except, of course, that Angkor Wat is real.
