It’s as if Assayas took the mood of the final 10 minutes of “Clouds of Sils Maria” and kept Stewart’s character on. A film about wandering around rootless in grief, Stewart’s Maureen is like a ghost herself: buying clothes for a celebrity she never sees, engaging in sexual/stalkery games with a mysterious texter, inhabiting rooms that are not her own, but finding no solace at home either. She talks earlier about being a medium and how it’s often like looking through the crack of a door…in a film that has numerous mysterious doors, including one that feels positively Lynchian in its menace. Even the ending, which promises human connection as last, eludes Maureen that which she desires. Great stuff. Stewart is perfect for these haunted roles.
It’s as if Assayas took the mood of the final 10 minutes of “Clouds of Sils Maria” and kept Stewart’s character on. A film about wandering around rootless in grief, Stewart’s Maureen is like a ghost herself: buying clothes for a celebrity she never sees, engaging in sexual/stalkery games with a mysterious texter, inhabiting rooms that are not her own, but finding no solace at home either. She talks earlier about being a medium and how it’s often like looking through the crack of a door…in a film that has numerous mysterious doors, including one that feels positively Lynchian in its menace. Even the ending, which promises human connection as last, eludes Maureen that which she desires. Great stuff. Stewart is perfect for these haunted roles.
It’s as if Assayas took the mood of the final 10 minutes of “Clouds of Sils Maria” and kept Stewart’s character on. A film about wandering around rootless in grief, Stewart’s Maureen is like a ghost herself: buying clothes for a celebrity she never sees, engaging in sexual/stalkery games with a mysterious texter, inhabiting rooms that are not her own, but finding no solace at home either. She talks earlier about being a medium and how it’s often like looking through the crack of a door…in a film that has numerous mysterious doors, including one that feels positively Lynchian in its menace. Even the ending, which promises human connection as last, eludes Maureen that which she desires. Great stuff. Stewart is perfect for these haunted roles.
West calls his struggle the right to be a “free thinker,” and he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom—a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; a Stand Your Ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of Nat Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom, freedom of the strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak, the freedom of rape buttons, pussy grabbers, and fuck you anyway, bitch; freedom of oil and invisible wars, the freedom of suburbs drawn with red lines, the white freedom of Calabasas.
And then, on the other hand, you have Donald Glover/Childish Gambino, and the brilliant This Is America video:
Facebook had replaced much of the emotional labor of social networking that consumed previous generations. We have forgotten (or perhaps never noticed) how many hours our parents spent keeping their address books up to date, knocking on doors to make sure everyone in the neighborhood was invited to the weekend BBQ, doing the rounds of phone calls with relatives, clipping out interesting newspaper articles and mailing them to a friend, putting together the cards for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas, and more. We don’t think about what it’s like to carefully file business cards alphabetically in a Rolodex. People spent a lot of time on these sorts of things, once, because the less of that work you did, the less of a social network you had.
If I present myself in a certain way in photos or my art (i.e. in a bikini, or even *gasp* nude), should I be surprised when someone at work makes certain assumptions about me? Did I bring this on myself?
Fuck. No. Because a job is a job, and, teeny tiny bikini or not, I deserve to be respected. Period. There is a definite fear post-harassment that if you address what happened, you will suffer severe repercussions for it. Will the perpetrator retaliate? Will you be fired? In fashion, you fear that you will be blacklisted, that clients will never book you again. You fear that by telling the truth, people will perceive that you could sell them out at any moment, that working with you means they might someday get thrown under the bus.
To illustrate how social media companies exaggerate their advertising power Mendelson offers a personal example. He has 700,000 Twitter followers. When he sent out a tweet about his new book he sold, not hundreds or thousands of copies, but exactly 28. A tweet to his 700,000 Twitter followers asking for a donation to a breast cancer charity netted just $1. While acknowledging that social media can, occasionally, be an effective advertising medium, for most of us it’s probably a big waste of time.
Another way we’ve ruined the ecosystem of the arts.
