RIP Ingmar Bergman
July 31, 2007
The first Ingmar Bergman movie I saw was The Seventh Seal. I watched it with my mother on public television when I was a teenager and I remember thinking: \”Wow, so this is where Roger Corman got his take on The Masque of the Red Death.\” It\’s been parodied a thousand times, famously in Bill and Ted\’s Bogus Journey (they play Twister with Death). In college, I saw a ton of Bergman movies: Wild Strawberries, Cries and Whispers (still among the most emotionally wrenching films I\’ve ever seen), Persona, The Virgin Spring. Then I started stocking them for my video store. I haven\’t seen every Bergman film–I\’ve only seen about half of them at a guess. I\’ve got the new Criterion Eclipse box of Bergman\’s early films sitting at home right now, unwatched just yet. Maybe I\’ve found an excuse to watch it.
My favorite parody of Bergman is a short film called \”De Duva: The Dove,\” which is sadly unavailable just about anywhere (I saw it in a film class). My second favorite is this, from the golden days of SCTV:
And I see that Michaelangelo Antonioni has died, too. A black week for fans of classic foreign films. I\’m not as much of a fan of Antonioni. A little ennui goes a long way.
RIP Ingmar Bergman
July 31, 2007
The first Ingmar Bergman movie I saw was The Seventh Seal. I watched it with my mother on public television when I was a teenager and I remember thinking: \”Wow, so this is where Roger Corman got his take on The Masque of the Red Death.\” It\’s been parodied a thousand times, famously in Bill and Ted\’s Bogus Journey (they play Twister with Death). In college, I saw a ton of Bergman movies: Wild Strawberries, Cries and Whispers (still among the most emotionally wrenching films I\’ve ever seen), Persona, The Virgin Spring. Then I started stocking them for my video store. I haven\’t seen every Bergman film–I\’ve only seen about half of them at a guess. I\’ve got the new Criterion Eclipse box of Bergman\’s early films sitting at home right now, unwatched just yet. Maybe I\’ve found an excuse to watch it.
My favorite parody of Bergman is a short film called \”De Duva: The Dove,\” which is sadly unavailable just about anywhere (I saw it in a film class). My second favorite is this, from the golden days of SCTV:
And I see that Michaelangelo Antonioni has died, too. A black week for fans of classic foreign films. I\’m not as much of a fan of Antonioni. A little ennui goes a long way.
Well…this is a surprise…
July 28, 2007
…or maybe it’s not:
 |
You scored as Transsexual, You seem to be a transsexual rather than a transgendered person.
TS or TG? |
Glad to know that random quizzes on the internet and my therapist are in agreement.
May you live in interesting times
July 27, 2007
Politics has been one of my hobbies for the last several years. I really need to give it up. It’s a pernicious habit. And yet, watching politics these days is like watching a slow-motion train wreck. It’s appalling, but you can’t look away. I wish that I could adopt the late Molly Ivins’s outlook and treat it as the best free entertainment on television.
Two items this week show the temperature of the times.
Item one: I got the chance to watch the CSPAN feed of Alberto Gonzalez testifying before congress this week. The spectacle of watching Fredo perjure himself wasn’t pleasant, but It wasn’t entirely unexpected, given that he was forced to go off his “I don’t recall” script. Watching Gonzo over the last several years has begged important questions in my mind. It used to be: “How the hell did this guy get to be Attorney General?” Lately, it’s been: “How the hell did this guy even pass the bar?” I think John Stewart had it right when he said that watching Gonzo use the phrase “I don’t recall” eight gajillion times reminded him of that scene in Goodfellas where Henry Hill gets arrested for the first time and Jimmy the Gent tells him: “You got pinched. Everybody gets pinched, but you did it right. You kept your mouth shut.” I think Gonzo is going to get himself impeached before the end of Bush’s term. Possibly before the end of this year.
Item two: I, for one, do NOT feel safer with the paternalistic guidance of Republicans in charge of national security. Quite the opposite. (I vehemently disagree with my friend Linda, who voted for Bush because she thought he was better on this issue than Kerry; I can hardly imagine anyone–save perhaps Dick Cheney–doing a worse job). Last month’s National Intelligence Estimate states that Al-Quaida is stronger now than it was on September 11, 2001. How, then, are we safer with Bush in office? Have five years of war all been for naught? Is the NIE a case of political fearmongering to run counter to the administration’s assertions that we are “winning” the war on terror? Is this a case of doublethink in the classic, Orwellian sense, in which we are asked to hold two mutually contradictory ideas in our heads at the same time? Or is this a case of one hand not seeing the other one for years? Clearly, someone is lying, and I suspect it’s not the NIE.
In any event, my fears on this count are beginning to redline. I’m not worried about Iraq, really. They’re NOT going to follow us home when we leave. I’m not even as concerned about Iran as I was last year. But Pakistan is another matter. Pakistan is becoming more and more destabilized by their support for the Bush administration, by Al-Qaida, and by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taliban is becoming a major player in their internal strife. Oh, and Pakistan has nukes. And a long-standing cold war with India. Who also have nukes. Here’s a nightmare scenario: The Taliban topples the Musharraf government, triggers a wider war in Afghanistan, and ends up being the target of a pre-emptive war by India in which nuclear arms are used. The folks at the State department must be having conniption fits and ulcers right now. All of this could have been avoided if the Bush administration didn’t have a pathological obsession with Iraq. Subtract the hundred thousand troops sent into Iraq at the beginning of 2003 and send them to Afghanistan and we aren’t having this conversation. But nooooo…
I’m reminded of that Far Side cartoon where the board of directors of a hot dog company is sitting in front of a big painting in which the hot dog has been placed into the bun sideways. “Gentlemen,” says the Chairman of the Board, “the company is riddled with incompetence.”
Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde
July 26, 2007
I\’m not always the bookish, schoolmarmish tgirl you see before you. Oh…most of the time I am, but I have a wild side, too. And the more time I spend away from being a girl–which, for various reasons, has been for several months now–the harder it is to keep that wild child from welling up to the surface. You really do need to keep the gators of your subconscious fed from time to time. I have this feeling that \”bad girl Christi\” is going to be in full control the next time I get out, probably at Southern Comfort. The downside of that is that SCC tends to maintain an institutional disapproval of that sort of behavior. The dismantling of the notorious PJ party over the last couple of years is the most obvious manifestation of this, but there are other manifestations, too. This, while occasionally sponsoring seminars in alternative sexualities and BDSM, indicates that SCC has a dichotomous personality, too, it seems.
The title of this post comes from the Hammer film of the same name, directed by Brian Clemens and starring Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick. Clemens knew a thing or two about tweaking repressed sexuality. He was the creator of The Avengers, in which the sly sexual by-play between Patrick McNee\’s John Steed and Diana Rigg\’s Mrs. Emma Peel hinted at dark sexualities (and sometimes more than hinted: see, for instance, the \”Queen of Sin\” episode in which Ms. Rigg trades her trademark leather cat suit for an S&M outfit of victorian corset and spiked leather dog collar. *sigh*).
Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde, like the Robert Lewis Stevenson story, presents an extreme case of sexual repression manifesting itself in disturbing indulgence when unleashed. In presenting it in a transgender context, I think it cleaves relatively close to the reality of some TG lives. Many of us keep our sexuality bound and gagged most of the time, only to give it license when we dress up and go out (I imagine that many of our closeted sisters never give it license at all). As a movie, Sister Hyde is an example of Hammer\’s kitchen sink period when they were trying anything and everything to titilate the public–mostly with lesbian vampires. It gets nice period production values from Hammer\’s familiar sets, and it actually gets some mileage from the conflation of Jeckyll and Hyde and Jack the Ripper. The film\’s best element is the downright creepy resemblance between lead actors Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick. If ever there were two actors ideal for portraying the same character on either side of the gender divide, it\’s these two. They provide an interesting comparison with the ridiculous casting of Rex Reed and Raquel Welch as Myron/Myra Breckinridge (though, in Myra Breckinridge\’s defense, there\’s a lot more wrong with that film than just its casting choices).
Of course, the downside of this movie is that it takes the Jeckyll/Hyde dichotomy into the cliche of the transgendered psychopath, which is probably unavoidable given the source material. It\’s also an example of Hammer\’s extremely conservative ideas of sexuality, in which men are paragons of moral rectitude and women–particularly sexually aware women–are given to licentious carousal with Hammer\’s various monsters.
Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde is unfortunately out of print on both VHS and DVD, but interested parties can probably find it used on eBay.
Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde
July 26, 2007
I\’m not always the bookish, schoolmarmish tgirl you see before you. Oh…most of the time I am, but I have a wild side, too. And the more time I spend away from being a girl–which, for various reasons, has been for several months now–the harder it is to keep that wild child from welling up to the surface. You really do need to keep the gators of your subconscious fed from time to time. I have this feeling that \”bad girl Christi\” is going to be in full control the next time I get out, probably at Southern Comfort. The downside of that is that SCC tends to maintain an institutional disapproval of that sort of behavior. The dismantling of the notorious PJ party over the last couple of years is the most obvious manifestation of this, but there are other manifestations, too. This, while occasionally sponsoring seminars in alternative sexualities and BDSM, indicates that SCC has a dichotomous personality, too, it seems.
The title of this post comes from the Hammer film of the same name, directed by Brian Clemens and starring Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick. Clemens knew a thing or two about tweaking repressed sexuality. He was the creator of The Avengers, in which the sly sexual by-play between Patrick McNee\’s John Steed and Diana Rigg\’s Mrs. Emma Peel hinted at dark sexualities (and sometimes more than hinted: see, for instance, the \”Queen of Sin\” episode in which Ms. Rigg trades her trademark leather cat suit for an S&M outfit of victorian corset and spiked leather dog collar. *sigh*).
Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde, like the Robert Lewis Stevenson story, presents an extreme case of sexual repression manifesting itself in disturbing indulgence when unleashed. In presenting it in a transgender context, I think it cleaves relatively close to the reality of some TG lives. Many of us keep our sexuality bound and gagged most of the time, only to give it license when we dress up and go out (I imagine that many of our closeted sisters never give it license at all). As a movie, Sister Hyde is an example of Hammer\’s kitchen sink period when they were trying anything and everything to titilate the public–mostly with lesbian vampires. It gets nice period production values from Hammer\’s familiar sets, and it actually gets some mileage from the conflation of Jeckyll and Hyde and Jack the Ripper. The film\’s best element is the downright creepy resemblance between lead actors Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick. If ever there were two actors ideal for portraying the same character on either side of the gender divide, it\’s these two. They provide an interesting comparison with the ridiculous casting of Rex Reed and Raquel Welch as Myron/Myra Breckinridge (though, in Myra Breckinridge\’s defense, there\’s a lot more wrong with that film than just its casting choices).
Of course, the downside of this movie is that it takes the Jeckyll/Hyde dichotomy into the cliche of the transgendered psychopath, which is probably unavoidable given the source material. It\’s also an example of Hammer\’s extremely conservative ideas of sexuality, in which men are paragons of moral rectitude and women–particularly sexually aware women–are given to licentious carousal with Hammer\’s various monsters.
Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde is unfortunately out of print on both VHS and DVD, but interested parties can probably find it used on eBay.
On Crossing the Rubicon
July 23, 2007
I made an appointment with a gender therapist last week. The act of doing so tied my innards in knots, knots that didn’t begin to loosen themselves until after the appointment on Saturday. In truth, they haven’t loosened entirely yet. I’m not entirely sure of why this has given me the anxiety and digestive upset it has given me. I’ve been out of the closet about my wants and needs for a decade. I’ve been out in public in drag on many occasions. This should be old hat to me. This isn’t the first time this has happened, though. It happened when I made an electrolysis appointment, too, though it wasn’t as…intense…as the anxiety I’m experiencing now. I’m normally the steadiest of people when it comes to emotional upset–I just don’t get riled up about much. So this is a new sensation to me.
For some reason, this seems like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Alea iacto est. The die is cast. I’ve passed the point of no return.
…which is silly. I’ve done nothing permanent to myself with regards to changing my gender. I’ve not undergone any medical procedures (there is the electrolysis, but it isn’t so advanced that it is even noticable on casual glance and it seems like a cosmetic procedure rather than a medical procedure). I could stop all of this at any time.
(“You sound like an alcoholic,” Felicia told me when I framed the thought this way.)
In my mind, I’m at stage three of a transition that I plotted out some time ago. The first stage was stablizing my finances. That’s done to the best of my current ability–I’m not wealthy, but I’m not on the brink of disaster, either, which was a week to week thing when I was younger. This stage isn’t even specific to gender, so much as it is something that anyone could and should do. Second was permanent hair removal, which is in process. Therapy is third. I’m not sure why this scares me, but it does. Am I in transition? Maybe I am. I’ve certainly gone well past the boundaries of “recreational crossdressing.”
To an extent, my apprehensions stem from the idea that I’m screwing up my life by pursuing this. I mean, I have it pretty good, all told. I have a good primary relationship with a woman who loves me, in spite of my peccadilloes. I have a job that provides me with no real stress. I’m not depressed. I’m not drinking or smoking myself into an early grave. I think I’m in a position where transition will cause me relatively little harm, but how the hell can I judge that? Let’s face it, transgender transition has the potential to be incredibly destructive. Relationships will change–many for the worse. Economic opportunity will diminish. Male privilege will fly out the window. Prejudice will become a daily experience. And that’s not even accounting for the medical issues.
And yet, I made the appointment. And I told the therapist that I wanted to transition. And we talked for a while about it to the point where she was reasonably sure that I was gender-dysphoric. She asked me if my eventual goal was SRS, and I told her “yes,” even though I’m not entirely sure of the veracity of my reply.
What the hell am I doing?
Anyway. She recommended that I keep a diary. I mentioned that I have a blog, and she suggest that that might suffice. Unfortunately, the beta version of 360 doesn’t have a means to lock posts for specific readers–a flaw in the system, I think–so I can’t really filter this. I’ve resisted turning this into a specificially “TG” blog, and I would prefer to maintain that balance, so I apologize if I end up writing about this stuff ad absurdum.
And maybe, writing about this will coax the snake that’s coiled around my stomach into relaxing his grip.
The Sorcerer\’s Apprentice
July 19, 2007
So I was having a conversation with Riz about the benefits and drawbacks of Netflix. She is looking at getting a membership as a means of feeding her movie habit more inexpensively than she currently does. She is like me, in a way. If she wants to see a movie on DVD, her first instinct is to buy it. If you have an acquisitive personality–like I do–this can cause money problems. I mentioned to her that, even though I\’m on Netflix as a kind of methadone treatment for a movie monkey on my back the size of King Kong, Netflix isn\’t perfect. It took me about twenty minutes to find the boundaries of Netflix\’s service, but part of that has to do with an appetite for film on my part that extends beyond what is currently available in the United States. I believe that Riz has an all-region DVD player, so she will soon discover this limitation for herself.
In any event, my experience with Netflix has been very good. I\’ve used it as a means of screening things that I might want to buy, but that I might NOT want to buy blind. I try not to get things from Netflix that are available from my excellent local mom and pop video store. It hasn\’t really curtailed my spending on movies to the extent that I would like–I just ordered the new Criterion edition of Billy Wilder\’s previously ultra-rare Ace in the Hole and the new Film Noir box from Warner Brothers, for instance–but it has kept me from making some very foolhardy purchases. The main downside of Netflix is that it makes me feel a little bit like The Sorcerer\’s Apprentice. The little red envelopes keep showing up and I feel an obligation to watch their contents as fast as I can in order to get the maximum value for my subscription. I\’ve started the brooms in motion, but I don\’t necessarily know how to keep them from flooding the Master\’s study.
One function of Netflix that I don\’t use–though I\’m not opposed to it–is the social networking. You can set up \”friends\” on Netflix just like you can here, and your friends can see what\’s in your rental queue. I suggested to Riz that she is more than welcome to view my queue, though my queue is a bit esoteric. I currently have the Japanese animated series, Le Chevalier d\’Eon at home, which occupies my three disc subscription. The top of my rental queue looks like this:
Zigeunerweisen
Kagero-Za
Yumeji
Untold Scandal
A Lizard in a Woman\’s Skin
Fires on the Plain
King Lear (Russian version by Grigori Kosinstev)
Norman McClaren: Master\’s Edition (7 discs)
Hammer Film Noir (3 discs)
War and Peace (Russian version from 1968, 5 discs)
Vital
Gemini
Equinox
The Face of Another
Pitfall…
…and I\’m sure that practically no one reading this has ever heard of anything in my queue. As I said, it\’s mostly esoterica. C\’est la vie. If any of my friends would like to \”friend\” me on Netflix, please feel free to let me know.
Shameless self-promotion: apart from linking to Riz\’s 360 page, the links on this post lead to Amazon. I\’m set up as one of their associate sites, so if you decide to buy one of the items I talk about, consider clicking from this post. If you do, I see a small portion of money from it. The item that is probably most of interest to readers of this blog is Le Chevalier d\’Eon , which is a fantasy based on the life of famed crossdresser d\’Eon du Beaumont, a spy, duelist, and soldier who lived the second half of his life as a woman. An archaic word for crossdressing common before Magnus Hirschfeld coined the word \”transvestite\” is \”Eonism,\” after the good Chevalier. In the immortal words of Bartles and James, \”Thank you for your support.\”
The Sorcerer\’s Apprentice
July 19, 2007
So I was having a conversation with Riz about the benefits and drawbacks of Netflix. She is looking at getting a membership as a means of feeding her movie habit more inexpensively than she currently does. She is like me, in a way. If she wants to see a movie on DVD, her first instinct is to buy it. If you have an acquisitive personality–like I do–this can cause money problems. I mentioned to her that, even though I\’m on Netflix as a kind of methadone treatment for a movie monkey on my back the size of King Kong, Netflix isn\’t perfect. It took me about twenty minutes to find the boundaries of Netflix\’s service, but part of that has to do with an appetite for film on my part that extends beyond what is currently available in the United States. I believe that Riz has an all-region DVD player, so she will soon discover this limitation for herself.
In any event, my experience with Netflix has been very good. I\’ve used it as a means of screening things that I might want to buy, but that I might NOT want to buy blind. I try not to get things from Netflix that are available from my excellent local mom and pop video store. It hasn\’t really curtailed my spending on movies to the extent that I would like–I just ordered the new Criterion edition of Billy Wilder\’s previously ultra-rare Ace in the Hole and the new Film Noir box from Warner Brothers, for instance–but it has kept me from making some very foolhardy purchases. The main downside of Netflix is that it makes me feel a little bit like The Sorcerer\’s Apprentice. The little red envelopes keep showing up and I feel an obligation to watch their contents as fast as I can in order to get the maximum value for my subscription. I\’ve started the brooms in motion, but I don\’t necessarily know how to keep them from flooding the Master\’s study.
One function of Netflix that I don\’t use–though I\’m not opposed to it–is the social networking. You can set up \”friends\” on Netflix just like you can here, and your friends can see what\’s in your rental queue. I suggested to Riz that she is more than welcome to view my queue, though my queue is a bit esoteric. I currently have the Japanese animated series, Le Chevalier d\’Eon at home, which occupies my three disc subscription. The top of my rental queue looks like this:
Zigeunerweisen
Kagero-Za
Yumeji
Untold Scandal
A Lizard in a Woman\’s Skin
Fires on the Plain
King Lear (Russian version by Grigori Kosinstev)
Norman McClaren: Master\’s Edition (7 discs)
Hammer Film Noir (3 discs)
War and Peace (Russian version from 1968, 5 discs)
Vital
Gemini
Equinox
The Face of Another
Pitfall…
…and I\’m sure that practically no one reading this has ever heard of anything in my queue. As I said, it\’s mostly esoterica. C\’est la vie. If any of my friends would like to \”friend\” me on Netflix, please feel free to let me know.
Shameless self-promotion: apart from linking to Riz\’s 360 page, the links on this post lead to Amazon. I\’m set up as one of their associate sites, so if you decide to buy one of the items I talk about, consider clicking from this post. If you do, I see a small portion of money from it. The item that is probably most of interest to readers of this blog is Le Chevalier d\’Eon , which is a fantasy based on the life of famed crossdresser d\’Eon du Beaumont, a spy, duelist, and soldier who lived the second half of his life as a woman. An archaic word for crossdressing common before Magnus Hirschfeld coined the word \”transvestite\” is \”Eonism,\” after the good Chevalier. In the immortal words of Bartles and James, \”Thank you for your support.\”
A Periodic Update
July 11, 2007
I’ve been bad about keeping up with my blog–almost as bad as I am about keeping up with my web page and, for that matter, with my girlie life in general. So here’s a random update.
I’m driving a rental car right now. The Yaris was NOT totalled, damn the luck, but I’m still holding out hope that the body shop will find something that will push it over the tipping point. The rental car I have is a Ford Fusion, which the rental place called a “mid-size.” It feels like a big car. It certainly guzzles gas like one. And yet, the interior is designed in such a way that the front seems cramped. I think the Yaris has it beat for interior room and leg room. It has a nasty blind spot, too, and the trunk sits so high that I can barely see the cars behind me in the rear view mirror. I can’t possibly imagine why the Japanese are kicking the asses of Detroit’s big three. I miss my small car.
I’m back into electrolysis now. I’m going to try a weekly schedule until September. If I can afford it, that is, which is by no means assured. I’ve pretty much removed what would be a normal beard from between my collarbone and where my Adam’s apple would be if I actually had one, but which leaves me at about the starting point of a normal beard. I’ve been follicularly blessed. This is going to be a long process.
I’ve been watching a bunch of Shaw Brothers kung-fu movies at home lately. In particular, I picked up the new editions of The One-Armed Swordsman, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, King Boxer (aka Five Fingers of Death), and a few others. Between them all, I think they cover just about every kind of kung-fu known to man. The real surprise was a Thai movie called Born to Fight, which doesn’t have much plot–and what plot there is is lifted from Gymkata (I shit you not). None of that matters, though, because it’s one of those Asian action movies where the stunt work is certifiably insane. It’s the sort of movie where you rewind some sequences to make sure your eyes weren’t lying to you. You have to watch it twice to catch the bits you miss while you’re picking your jaw up off the floor. Is it a good movie? Not really, but, Jeez, these people are amazing and crazy in equal measure.
Finally, I registered for SCC this year. I should be arriving on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending. I look forward to seeing my friends. I look forward to meeting the friends who I haven’t met in person yet.
