Dios tiene dos libros
ø
American Apparel Ad Campaigns Dance With Porn
ø
What’s a girl still peddling grrl-power shirts part-time to say? I called the feminist analyzers of pop culture over at Bitch magazine for advice. After all, they, too, use Dov’s blank undies and shirts for their line of merchandise.
But Andi Zeisler, the mag’s editorial and creative director, seemed just as confused as I was. “It’s a conundrum.” Especially since, as she says, “most of the [no-sweat] stuff out there is not very stylish.” But she concludes, “I cannot agree with [the owner’s] choice in imagery, I cannot agree with his claim that he’s slept with [some] of his employees and the fact that he’s masturbated in front of a Jane [Magazine] reporter. But at the same time, he’s being very honest, and I appreciate that more than I appreciate a lot of the designers out there who say their clothes can be worn by any woman and make them cost thousands of dollars and cut them up to a size 4.”
Former porn star turned PhD sexologist Annie Sprinkle goes one step further, saying the ads are actually refreshing – exciting even. “I like the sweat, the grit, the reality. He obviously appreciates female sexuality in all its glorious sleaziness. And I think you can worship female sexuality and also worship women in the workplace.” Adds the lecturing performance artist, “If you see sex as bad, dirty and ugly, then you’re going to see these ads as bad, dirty and ugly. These ads are kind of a mirror. In a way, they’re almost neutral.”
But not all observers are so supportive. Media Watch founder Ann Simonton says it might be time for a boycott. “This is beyond ‘sex sells.’ It goes to a level of humiliation.” In fact, she says the ads stem from the same branch of reality porn as “humilitainment,” the kind that stages drive-by gang rapes but tries to make them look real.
Y ahora supongo que yo, por ser var
There is no clear “mission” underway
ø
In a war rife with college-aged American casualties, the ivory tower provides thick insulation against the realities of our peers who are living on the front line. Gunner Palace, Michael Tucker’s new documentary about the war in Iraq, is a potent reminder that most of the soldiers on the front lines could be behind us in line to tap a keg—if only they weren’t in uniform.
The product of 60 days spent with soldiers of the 2/3 Field Artillery, a.k.a. “The Gunners,” the film consists of everything from interviews to impromptu freestyle sessions, punctuated by mortar fire and MTV-style editing. The movie doesn’t quite shock and doesn’t quite awe. But it does achieve a subtler success: it captures the difference between the disjointed world of war and the smooth, clearly-labeled sound bytes of the coverage on the nightly news.
This is the very crux of the movie’s success: it demonstrates the incoherence and illogic of war from a soldier’s perspective. The Gunners themselves are familiar to us. Their early awkwardness in front of the camera is reminiscent of an eighteen-year-old asking for a first date. They live in the bombed-out pleasure palace of Uday Hussein, and if not for the uzis and the uniforms, some of the scenes almost evoke Animal House—pool parties, death metal T-shirts, rat chases around the cluttered floor of what looks like a dorm room.
But the movie faces something of a paradox: how does one use footage of reality to communicate the surreal situation of war?
Una de las cosas fascinantes de LiT es c
Horror vacui
ø
In scrapbook culture, page layout itself is the province of the fearless: here, less is never more. (“Use themed die-cuts to accent your pages!”) Burdened by questions about how to frame your loved ones? Just hop on over to the Cropping Corner to learn how to crop photographs in new and unusual shapes. Need more inspiration? The members area at Luv2Scrapbook share over 3,000 layout ideas, which is nothing compared to the 15,000+ available over at Lifetime Moments. Need ideas on “accenting” your pages with embellishments? (“Embellishments” represent a significant core competency in the scrapbooking world.) Interested would-be embellishers can visit Addicted to Scrapbooking to learn more about trinkets, patches, themed eyelets and page pebbles; or Making Memories to lean the best way to untwist a twistel. (I didn’t know either: it’s a kind of wiry raffia-type ribbon, I think.)
Via Kottke, esta fascinante entrada en Design Observer sobre el scrapbooking, el adorno/creaci
Johnny cogi
ø
A ruler is pasted against the wall
to tell time by, but it’s too late. The snow’s
knack for seeking out and penetrating crevices
has finally become major news.
Let’s drink to that, and the tenacity of just seeming.*
A certain satisfaction
has been granted us. Sure, we keep coming back
for more — that’s part of the ‘human’ aspect
of the parade. And there are darker regionspenciled in, that we should explore some time.
For now, it’s enough that this day is over.
It brought its load of freshness, dropped it off
and left. As for us, we’re still here, aren’t we?
A los 77, John Ashbery tiene un nuevo libro, Where Shall I Wander?, y el NY Times le dedica la pertinente rese
