I was watching the documentary "Paris Is Burning."  Incredible to witness the raw orphaned desire for belonging of a marginalized culture, at the same time it's brilliant, glamorous unappreciated creativity.  The film encompasses the grit of the 80s with its unsafe streets juxtaposed with glorified high materialism, fetishizing wealth,large cold modernist apartments, the brands and outfits of class, and this world that the young gay people in the film are barred from.  They run away at 13 or 14 and become hustlers.  A world I can't fathom, one where childhood and the security of parents standing in an unambiguous role of protection, one where the people we have sex with or those we work with those we befriend also become our parents.  The pathless longing for warmth, acceptance, and the markers of what growing up in a family is, without knowing why you want it or what.  These kids would be absorbed into the competitive, creative, glamour imitating circles of the "houses" of drag balls.  They would find an anchor in slightly older people who are gay.  Motherless, but talented, creative, competitive, fiery and full of a great vibrant subculture.  They craved to be appreciated, part of the establishment, to come out on top, to be in a modernist mansion away from New York and the windows facing on other projects, dark forest puce colored rooms with peeling wallpaper and cut outs of models.  Glamor of the kind mainstream and accepted on television varnished was fetishized by the unappreciated, the artists whose edge and burning creative competition, their society and the ways to hone their craft, would come from being on the sidelines and longing to be in the forefront.  I have always been surprised at the way gay men fetishize the outer varnish of aristocratic wealth, the style, glamor, and class which is the exoskeleton of what is left of the appropriate courtesies and rituals of the born and bred elite.  Style and class have become the husks, easily cast off, of the proper obligation of the aristocratic classes, once a stuffy burden that America fought to remove, yet style, the je ne sais quoi of class and the muse-like appearance of beauty that says nothing for itself is precisely what makes wealth and its trappings compelling, style is the mythology of wealth, class is the rudiment of meet and proper noblesse oblige. Just as the feathers, outer garments of camp, mannerisms, and make up are the outer markers of drama and theater.. lights and glitter are the arrows and clues that point to the substance of the show about to begin, yet the lights, the costumes, the theater make up "the costumes, the scenery, the make up, the props" carry the legacy of the golden age of traditional theater and vaudeville before it, the plot, the tight comedic lines, these are what we associate with the capital T Grand Theater.  The old diva theatrical principles with their aura of strength, drama, and attitude are behavioral examples and their confidence cues us to expect the substance and beauty of a great performance, a legendary performance that sets us in a legendary time.  Let's not forget that the lifeblood of the theater and actors is one of vanity, closeness with a camera and nakedness in front of it, familial intimacy with a crowd, an audience that feeds, validates with applause, and creates a reciprocal relationship in the actor's mind that is not in the audience.  What feeds the actor is substantial, is emotional, full of depth, the study of acting, the repartee and interrelationship with the audience, the set up, the stage, the world they live in at that moment is their lens on life.  And this is what produces the veneer, the veneer of camp, glamor, lights, sparkles, the strength and beauty of the diva principal from a long line of diva principals.  The promise of a beautiful, golden show can be more beautiful than the show.  Is this what gay men love and idolize in the theater, in fashion, the style of the rich, and the many creative arts?  The balls are replete with glitz as well as the ethos of battle, which is competition, specifically, competing group prowess.  What do the competitors have prowess at?  Both the silver veneer of glamor that calls up so many associations of class, taste, aristocracy if they are imitating models, drama, intensity, theatricality if they consider themselves to be poor versions of their favorite celluloid screen actresses.  The beauty of Hollywood and the beauty of fashion maintains itself as a hologram, the promise of transcendent art based on the idyll of unadulterated glamor that it sells.  Marilyn was very much a hologram of herself, a different woman on the inside, yet one who smiled orgasmically, whose gown sparkled in the white gentle light of the celluloid old world cameras, her veneer took the breath away because, like that of Gilda, it lived on its own. The veneer was the peerless Platonic ideal of Hollywood beauty.  And so it wouldn't die.  Regardless of who Marilyn was on the inside.  Much like advertising, the aspect of glamor, carefully filtered and produced, is a come on and promise of the more immediate life, the more beautiful life, the better life, regardless of what video camera tricks or illusions of makeup it took to produce it.  The muse lives on in distance, uniformity of the veneer, we can take on a glimmering husk of it when we dress like that, when we embody ourselves with the confidence, sharpness, and pain of glamor.  Which indicates struggle inside, fragility and vulnerability, in perpetuating the art of using one's body and personality to appear as an art and canvas for the idea of glamor.  Thus, beautiful pained people in this movie, the most beautiful and poignant being Venus a pail, thin charismatic shade were the most poignant because they would be sacrificed to their cult legend.  The mix of being shut out and unwanted by a society that values mainstream wealth, cobbling together a family with danger sex and drugs in the mix, and wanting that mainstream recognition despite creating a community that feeds on the glamor of insular fame created this delicate art, this scene that soon people would not turn away from.  I don't think this sort of dance, creative fecundity, and attitude can be produced in any other pressure cooker.
If they grew up differently, they would be me, craving for the intensity of a fresh venue, creating problems in their middle class environment like Goth Jenna Malone.

The drag ball is a show of prowess and a dance.  It is a competitive, driven group effort and the drive is toward art, a personal art that is a resurrection of the veneer of glamor worshiped in various forms of art for mainstream consumption such as fashion and movies.

I don't think they could be satisfied if they grew up in what they perceived as the majority, and their creativity would not be as immediate or their talent or drive as incisive.  The possibility of living a passable life that does not leave a wound could consign them to mediocrity, that of the accountants and collegiate assessors who would never be confident in their art, would consume, spend "quality time," and not create.  I think that sacrificing for the art of living a good life, of only being one's ow art, of one's children or one's day job being one's own art, precludes sacrificing one's happiness to create a tangible product and form of art.  Which requires full attention.  Which will leave varying intensity.  Which requires an unopened unhealed wound that leaves one to the observation of extreme states as well as their fellow man.  We forfeit a life in art when we focus on "self help," when we try for the art and science of making oneself happy.  But, I'm not convinced at all that the person producing art is not happy.  They may not be happy ever due to the requirement to produce be the vessel empty the vessel.  But, the person who does not create anything will never know what it is like to be an empty vessel.

I think that focusing on an artfully lived life or going for "self help" if you do not have diagnosable problems is a mistake.  I think that turning one's monomania inward on oneself does not produce a happy life.  Regardless of whether or not we work hours and hours on the treadmill of a promised promotion or salary raise.  It becomes disturbing to be a rat on a treadmill when we realize that we are compromising our values and replacing our goal track for someone else's.  The discomfort comes when we have changed our lives past the point that it suits our own needs.  When we become a cog in the wheel of what a job requires, which is service and utility to the organism you are a part of, as great as possible of utility with evolving self determining ways of being more useful, we forget that we and the job have a reciprocal relationship, or at least we have a reciprocal relationship with ourselves.  When the job begins to dictate how we live to a point of discomfort, this is when we feel controlled, when our highest goals become not our own.  We stay up later than we like to, we get up earlier than we like to, in the service of working more than we like to and as a result we are unsatisfied to sacrifice our base line requirements for the way we want to live (for instance, eating fresh food at dinner or going outside for lunch) to increase yield and profit margin, to wholly align our mindset with the organism we are in service to.  This is when we reassess.

Anyway, the kids in the movie experience privation, lack of family roots, danger, and marginalization.  They are starved of family and the community of people they know through that.  They make their own family.  They do not romanticize 80s New York and its danger the way I do.  They see it as a place to get through and get by and one where they are shut out of the most glamorous tidbits, where they are forced to subsist on a lack of success despite their outstanding talent, competitive spirit and passion.  I am still amazed at the gay fetishization of glamor and the trappings of class.  The allure of fashion is in the ineffable quality of glamor and class, the allure of theater is not in its words and substance, but in its drama, theatricality, and camp.  I see the trappings of bohemia and the quite tragedy that makes it so beautiful, I see a boiling subculture I missed.  I find their perspective and world unbelievably seductive, beautiful, and torn much like Candy Darling, and find the world of straight men and people around me dull and stentorian, their insistence on the "banality of evil" unless it's superhero vs supervillain.  The lack of mystery in their music, the lack of edge in their gore, the lack of sexuality in their prn, simply two barbie like leathery skins grinding up against each other with cartoonish body parts overexposed to the camera like in a fisheye.  How can they find sexuality and mystery in this and not see the sexuality in the husk of glamor, the mailed hologram of the muse, what gay men saw in Gilda flirting for the camera? 

The angriest are the least mobile, those who have no integrity and seek to ingratiate themselves with others by cloaking their true personality.  If you want to be great, you have to bust ass.  Bust ass at what?  The act of busting ass itself for no reason dissipates inspiration and fun.  In order to bust ass, one must first joyfully explore the thing they want to chip away at for the rest of their life.  Anyway.  I can say for sure that I am tired of the conventional advice that both recommends that people sail the wild blue, grasp at and structure big ideas, and bust their ass ragged beyond the intuitive point where they get something done.  Now here's my OkCupid hamster meme.

What is my gripe with my imagined OkCupid hamster?  Is it that he is a sensitive schmendrick with a sleek marketing package of being a self-effacing go-getter, but yet desires the exact same piece of azz that Mr. MBA Douche is hunting for?  A slightly different self-presentation for the same wife-able bimbo.  The Josh Radnor schtick hoping that Eurasian Maggie Q Meatpacking hostess (or hopefully marketing analyst/jewelry designer) who can also cook and is sweet, positive, sporty can accept the capital of someone of a well traveled nature and well loved job, rather than finance douche with face tattoo.  As opposed to the Manic Pixie Dream Girls' catnip, the creatively blocked schlemiel.  Maybe because the writer, sensitive Ruby programmer, and desirer observes and the desired, muse, tai chi enthusiast with a penchant for pretty dresses is desired, observed and drawn by older college guys in a totally legit way when she herself is a high school student.  She is the back up dancer in Pretty Girl Rock.  She is in some ways confident, in others raw, edgy, crazy adventurous in that "let's hold some knives and shoot some guns to feel" way, a crazy, dangerous woman like Olivia's character in the New Girl.  I am a slightly less goal driven version of this observant male archetype and "on the bleachers."  I always said that I would in some ways rather be Nick Carraway than Gatsby, observing the ephemeral actors in their shifting zeitgeist than being the Mary Pickford-like shimmery players who have "It," until it changes.  Wasn't Frank O'Hara so beautful, musing on construction workers during his lunch break?  New York still has construction workers, but lacks the raw immigrant power of those who worked a specific job at a steel mill and the gay artists willing to accept a window on a brick wall and roaches to live and drool among them.  I'm always shocked at gay men's worship of the quasi Aryan body and lack of acknowledgement of the fact that the faces attached often have little sparkle of intelligence or character.  Hence the sharp divide of gay men not being attracted to "nerdy" Jorma without definition and women falling all over his self effacing mop of hair and self deprecating D jokes... though he is less believable as an overconfident and under tall art star Girls douche.

I read the New Yorker story "Creatures," but what I remembered about it tended to dissipate in the pageantry of the Golden Globes.  The show of the crazy, image obsessed screen holograms whose hard work, passion from an early age, and bond with cast and crew dominate their work.  The actors we honor with their green juices, youth elixirs, botox, fad diets, and tendency to call what they do a "job" and being on the job.  Many of the actors came up and thanked their crew, claiming that the odd, intensely communal existence of the shoot brought them closest to the crew and cast.  The crew, the unseen and invisible handymen who inevitably form bonds with the actors.  I see the actors and faces of Hollywood that digest national calamities with "Feed the World" songs as a sounding board for national ills.  The somewhat vulnerable and sensitive, required to maintain a polished image for HD, ambassadors on the state of America.  In 2010, the awards ceremonies reflected the wake of the earthquake in Haiti and economic problems in the US, tearful celebrities thanked their spouses almost first, like now they mention their crew.  They seem to be our official face when we are wracked with calamity or not, even Clinton coming out in his less than glorious retirement to commend the portrayal of a president on the celluloid screen, acting as himself recalling his acting as a president.  I see their formal reception and internalization of the national state of mind as somewhat tragic.  Much as I saw my professor talking and philosophizing about human ills, her intellectual detachment somewhat shaken by the fact that she sometimes felt ungood even in class.  When those who comment on our condition, reflect it, or seem to sit behind an unreal screen of it, are themselves vulnerable to it, our condition is doubly vulnerable.  Actors exclusively represented a glossy version of our somewhat past reality that's okay to talk about now (Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln), moreso in the days before the internet when film and publishing companies mostly had control of content.  Now they must reflect and dialogue with the internet.  Thankfully there were no lifetime achievement awards for Grumpy Cat or a Twitter feed above the screen like there was for the hurricane concert.  Similar to the tragic nature of a femme fatale breaking down or being of frail health in an exquisite dress, red lips, and pancake makeup, trying to hold it together despite mascara running..  Keeping up appearances in itself can be inherently tragic.  The refusal to rest, to laugh in spite of the threat of chaos, if the straps on one's boots start to fray.  Laughter in crisis, dressing up to pick up the garbage, spritzing on perfume, it depresses me more than taking care of oneself, more than submitting to the cocoon of self preservation.  Even if it's necessary to stay alive. 

I watched La Pianiste or The Piano Teacher.  What strikes me is the poisonous quality in which repressed desire dulled by lack of understanding or shame is quickly attenuated and becomes something cruel.  Violence mimics the first physical passions of copulation, not to speak of copulation informed by other emotions.  Voyeurism becomes a point with which to access the physical abandon of copulation.  From her voyeurism and desire to pee or cause herself pain, Huppert's character transmutes the hopeless urge and the desperate finality in her life with a kind of beastly desire to feel an urgency of any kind, a violence that mimics the emotions or rituals of sex.  The violent visual of a woman only servicing and not being touched itself becomes a grotesque and the smelly cloth she holds up to her nose, all are a marker of the taboo and the ripping apart of the previous innocence and lack of intimacy.  Her lack of privacy, her hopelessness and her tight repression further distances the act as a violent rushing that is taboo.  She takes a razor to her much as people "hurt themselves to feel."  As the door is shut on a commonplace sexuality, the crack in her character's joyless, stentorian veneer as a teacher and the spoiled, predatory relationship with her mother at home overwhelms the space she allotted to her shame and lack of experience.  Her fascination with the simple and physical sensuality of the adolescents in the food court and the animal act in the drive in movie keeps her at the basic level, where the act is taboo and purely satisfying to the damaged id.  Her character is sociopathic in her cruelty, sometimes childlike when she sprinkles crushed glass into her student's coat after watching her young man comfort her.  And markedly without compassion or relaxation.  The moment of functional copulation is stolen from her in the her language, the violence and dysfunctionality with which she indirectly accessed a pantomime of sex.  Her young man falls, first from disgust and simply giving up on this woman with more mental problems than she's worth, to a violent adoption, a hopeless adoption of her own language.  Her understanding of sex through violence does not prepare her for the cruelty, violation, and abandonment that is copulation on her own terms.  Merely, from not having been touched, she only registers sensuality through being beaten.  These are the metaphors, the proxy of the mimicry of sex, its violence, tendency to ravage, unite, and unleash.  Her cruelty stems from not allowing herself to experience the acuteness of physical pleasure, whose intensity can be mimicked by physical pain, expressing urges and thus transcending them into a version of adult love. She first services the man the way she sees in her movies to mimic the animal violence of the love she sees and also to avoid being touched.  Control and the setting of masochistic ground rules keeps copulation in the dirty model she learned from various sources, rather than his somewhat more experienced rote blandishments.  Her perversion of the copulation act due to repression scares him.  The desire to be hurt, thrown around, made to serve, beaten, but not touched in a way that catapults her into vanilla procreation, that strips away the veneer and sexual holograms she held in fascination during her perceived virginity.  As her sexuality molders in spinster adolescence, her relationship with her mother is controlling, co-dependent, and adolescent.  Two women separated by no wall slowly eating each other alive.  Though she appears to test her young man and claim that she doesn't love him, the fact that he not only rebuffs her, but says that her urges repulse him, hurt her and cause her to transfer or displace a storm of her misdirected sexuality to her mother, acting out a passion of emotion she might feel for him.  Offense, the desire not to be left like an outmoded toy, and knowledge of a love opportunity completely frittered away by her cold exterior possibly motivate the silent and frightening attempt tto pin her mother.  The adolescent image of copulation, when it is still taboo, is shrouded in mystery and mostly physical like the subject of her voyeurism.  As personal experience increases, the alchemy of sexual experience and the gamut of emotions and complexity it allows one to access becomes manifest.  As the young man again rebuffs her and her experience with him at the concert, she is, despite her sociopathy and compulsive behavior due to long drought, kicked away like a puppy.  She responds again with violent misdirection, perhaps desiring to knife him instead, perhaps to take him again or otherwise express the betrayal that his supposed love made so easy, by hurting herself in a place other than her lady parts and her heart, that she both wants to fill and stab away. 

The desire is passive aggressive, unused to, inexperienced in, and not expecting the rote maneuvers of courtship, it deviates to the perverse which is also the safe.  Copulation in the imagination becomes a dark, movie-like, mysterious, and wholly physical act.  Other women are safe and her mother is both taboo and easy to find, the theaters she goes to require an exchange of money and no contact with a human being, the slapping, humiliation, the providing of pleasure to another does not satisfy, but merely distract from or mimic the hunger, just like taking a razor to herself to avoid touching herself.  All is painful, but in terms of sexual taking, prim. 

Her character is not only an archetype of rankling, spoiled, spinster hunger that still longs for the "7 Minutes In Heaven" happiness promised, stuck in the moment before despoiling.   She does not resemble an un-innocent Gerty Farish type of character who distracts from, but still longs for the happiness of pressure and courtship.  Her sociopathic actions, as they cascade on each other, urge the unexplainable.  They do not fully demand compassion from the audience, but they beckon understanding.  Why, the audience asks, is she doing this, and her silent actions and quiet avowals of motive are all the audience has to go by.  We are not called to pity her, but we are called to observe and begin to piece together the great tearing damage of her person.