Okay then...

[selenak]

So, to recapitulate: the NRA/Republican Party response to the Parkland students so far was, leaving out the usual "thoughts and prayers" right at the start:

- those students are not students but "crisis actors"
- they're real students but coached by evil Democratic masterminds and don't know what they're doing/talking about
- the shooting was really organized by the FBI/evil Democrats
- the students are heartless fameseekers
- the students are really to blame for the shooting because the shooter was bullied.


All revolting, but the last one especially so. This article by a student who tried to be nice to the future shooter despite the way he menaced her, and what this resulted in, makes for devastating reading.

You know, I remember the Orange Menace's boast that he could shoot someone in public on Fifth Avenue and his followers would still stand by him. Depressingly, a year of evidence made me conclude it's even worse. Spoilers for decades old Stephen King novel to follow: In The Dead Zone, one of his earlier novels, Stephen King has its eerily Trump-lke politician (aka the other US (almost) President Martin Sheen played in the film version) finally brought down by said guy grabbing a toddler to hide behind when the shooting starts, on live tv. It's not often that you can say Stephen King turns out to have been overly optimistic about human nature. By now, I'm convinced the Orange Menace could personally beat a toddler to death on live tv, and his base, as well as most of the Republican party, would react as follows:

a) The toddler is white:

- the whole thing didn't happen; the toddler was a Hollywood special effect
- if it did happen, the toddler attacked the Orange Menace first
- also, the toddler probably had rabies and the Orange Menace had to stop the kid from spreading it
- look, it was good for the ratings, why are you complaining anyway?

b) The toddler belongs to a non-white ethnic group
- clearly, the toddler was a terrorist; our thoughts and prayers are with the President, and Congress needs to enforce better anti-immigration laws against the *insert ethnic group of choice* toddler menace.


On to less depressing issues. This year, James Ivory, better known as a director of book adaptions in the 80s and early 90s (to the point where "Merchant/Ivory" became basically a trademark), won an Oscar for his screenplay for the movie Call me by your name (another one I need to watch before it leaves the cinemas again), which he did not direct. This resulted in some renewed media attention and this delightful interview, in which, among other things, he calls the director out on not providingfull frontal male nudity:

One aspect that does still rankle with him is the absence of full-frontal male nudity. Ivory’s screenplay specified that Elio and Oliver would be shown naked, a detail overruled by clauses in the actors’ contracts. “When Luca says he never thought of putting nudity in, that is totally untrue,” says Ivory. “He sat in this very room where I am sitting now, talking about how he would do it, so when he says that it was a conscious aesthetic decision not to – well, that’s just bullshit.
“When people are wandering around before or after making love, and they’re decorously covered with sheets, it’s always seemed phoney to me. I never liked doing that. And I don’t do it, as you know.” In Maurice, his 1987 film of EM Forster’s posthumously published gay love story, “the two guys have had sex and they get up and you certainly see everything there is to be seen. To me, that’s a more natural way of doing things than to hide them, or to do what Luca did, which is to pan the camera out of the window toward some trees. Well …” He gives a derisive snort.

I hear you, Mr. Ivory, I hear you. And he did walk the walk, not just in Maurice; unless I misremember, A Room with a View provides male nudity as well. The article also mentions his life long partnership (romantic as well as professional) with the late Ismail Merchant, and when the reporter asks why they didn't talk with the press about being a couple back in the day, he gets told: “That is not something that an Indian Muslim would ever say publicly or in print. Ever! You have to remember that Ismail was an Indian citizen living in Bombay, with a deeply conservative Muslim family there. It’s not the sort of thing he was going to broadcast. Since we were so close and lived most of our lives together, I wasn’t about to undermine him.”


That Ivory is still holding on to his decades long dream project of making a cinematic adaption of Richard II . (angevin2, do you know about this?) and hopes his Oscar may finally make it possible: him, on the one hand, yay, otoh, between the BBC adaption starring Ben Wishaw and the RSC production starring David Tennant in recent years, he might be out of luck again, or does the fact both were tv productions make a difference?

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

The notorious Rick Santorum also recently suggested that students should stop demonstrating and start learning CPR, in those very words.

Although the "school shooters are bullying victims who were driven to the breaking point by heartless, sadistic jocks" is a misconception that is widespread among left-wing people as well, and dates right back to misinformed early reporting of the Columbine massacre.

[muccamukk]

"How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem," Santorum said, "do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that."

AMAZING!

[selenak]

re: Santorum, yes, I heard. Disgusting.

The shooter we had in Munich at the Olympiazentrum shopping mall (was that already two years ago?) was actually a bullied teenager. And a Breivik admirer and right wing extremist. The two can go together, but don't have to, and at any rate "those students should better do something against bullying/ those students are the ones truly at fault" is deflection of the worst type. (Incidentally, the Munich shooter got his gun only via the dark web, and the seller, also someone with right extremist views and Neonazi connections, was put on trial here in Munich last year.)

[conuly]

I could point out that CPR is useless against bullets, but I'm continually struck by the fact that if you're bleeding out, you probably would prefer the heartbeat to slow.

[sovay]

And he did walk the walk, not just in Maurice; unless I misremember, A Room with a View provides male nudity as well.

You're right on both fronts. It's even more casual in A Room with a View, which is really nice.

Trees notwithstanding, I loved Call Me by Your Name.

[selenak]

I'm looking forward to watching it!

[watervole]

thank you for this post. As always an intelligent summation with a few key links.

[selenak]

Thank you as well.

[monanotlisa]

I agree, unfortunately, with your assessment of Donald Trump v. Toddler.

(Metaphorically, that's TWO toddlers, but, okay...)

That NYT article by Isabella was so great. What a keen sense of identifying the issues -- I ran into similar problems at school when I was younger, and ranted about them (reasonably eloquently; you know me). But I couldn't have written about it in a national newspaper with that kind of clear-eyed perspective. Chapeau.

[selenak]

Indeed, I don't think I could have done it at her age, either, but then I would not have been nice enough to try and help this guy in the first place.

[espresso_addict]

Thanks for linking the Guardian article. I didn't know Merchant & Ivory were a couple. Maurice & Room with a View were very unusual in their male nudity scenes back then, but the strange thing is that they still are, at least in mainstream film-making.

[selenak]

Well, in US mainstream film-making; I won't claim that in other countries it's male nudity paradise, but at least this ridiculous US tv (and some cinema) habit of wrapping yourself in a sheet when getting out of bed isn't common.

But yeah. Mind you, I think part of it is probably the rating, i.e. in many countries, full frontal nudity of either gender earns you an adult rating which automatically limits the amount of cash the producers can make - but even male nudity filmed from behind or with strategically placed plants to hide the penis isn't that common, especially in a romantic/sexual context.

[conuly]

I admit, I am increasingly disturbed by the petulance displayed by the US right. They used to have some brains, didn't they?

[selenak]

It's especially ironic since they're prone to call everyone else "snowflakes".

[conuly]

Well, that's typical childish projection.

[shadowkat]

1. Just be happy that you aren't living in a country with the Doofus as president. OR have to interact daily in the workplace with people who voted for him and support him. Or see comments from his supporters to relatives posts on social media.

Ugh.

Stephen King has posted pretty much what you did on Twitter after the Doofus got elected. Ugh. It's disgusting. I keep hoping he will go away. He's not.

On the other hand? It is admittedly amusing that he seems to keep firing people every five seconds. I don't think he's managed to keep many of his prime cabinet members in office for more than a month or two at tops.

2. Interesting bit on Merchant/Ivory. I didn't know that. I agree with Ivory on all of the above. It's nudity. Americans and the British are ridiculously prudish when it comes to nudity and sex. Violence on the other hand we have no issues with. I discovered how different Germany and France regard both -- when I visited the countries in the 1980s. Nudity and sex weren't that big a deal.
But the British and in particular the Americans are weird about it.