風刺
Most movies come to Tokyo pretty late. Mega-hype machines such as Casino Royale are generally here while they're in the States. (It opened on 1 December, and I'm going this weekend.) The Devil Wears Prada, which I've been hearing about from friends at home for months, just got here a few weeks ago, and I went on Sunday. I still think Anne Hathaway has the most annoying voice this side of Hillary. Possibly on the far side of Hillary, for that matter. And the satire struck me as kind of muddled.
What I'd really feared, though, was that it would end up being two hours of strung-together one-liners that could be uttered by any old bitch any old place...you know, the way a lot of sitcoms seem to be now. Good smart-ass remarks are attuned to their context, which is why you have to give five minutes of background exposition before explaining why what your best friend said at brunch last Sunday was so hilarious. The movie got that part right; most of the wisecracks fit the characters and the scene and didn't feel as if they'd been bought by the pound and sprinkled over the script like pignoli.
Unfortunately, not everyone who trades on bitchery does a good job at it, and Salon has a decent piece on the terminally tiresome Perez Hilton. It made me feel old in places, as when the writer said things like this:
Someone needs to tell the child about Michael Musto...though on second thought, maybe he's better off not knowing. In any case, while the article's kind of verbose, I liked the Bruce Vilanch quotation at the end:
I don't think it's every public figure's responsibility to be a role model, exactly, and Vilanch seems to assume that anyone who's closeted must be bitter and miserable (though he may not be generalizing the way he appears to be). Nevertheless, he's right in the main. Who wants to join a "community" with its most shrieky, oafish members always at the ready to broadcast to everyone that you're gay, as if even they regarded it as some kind of compromising secret, before you've decided how best to go about it? (Michelangelo Signorile, who's so morally obtuse he's practically a reflex angle, naturally contributes a quotation or two of blurry rhetoric of his own defending outing also.)
What I'd really feared, though, was that it would end up being two hours of strung-together one-liners that could be uttered by any old bitch any old place...you know, the way a lot of sitcoms seem to be now. Good smart-ass remarks are attuned to their context, which is why you have to give five minutes of background exposition before explaining why what your best friend said at brunch last Sunday was so hilarious. The movie got that part right; most of the wisecracks fit the characters and the scene and didn't feel as if they'd been bought by the pound and sprinkled over the script like pignoli.
Unfortunately, not everyone who trades on bitchery does a good job at it, and Salon has a decent piece on the terminally tiresome Perez Hilton. It made me feel old in places, as when the writer said things like this:
In fact, Perez is filling a cultural role first blazed by Steven "Coju" Cojocaru, Carson Kressley and Bobby Trendy: the bitchy gay man who has all the dish. [...] In a very real way, he's a modern-day Stepin Fetchit, cheerfully describing himself as a "media whore" for hire.
Someone needs to tell the child about Michael Musto...though on second thought, maybe he's better off not knowing. In any case, while the article's kind of verbose, I liked the Bruce Vilanch quotation at the end:
Of Hilton's argument that he's helping further gay civil rights, [Vilanch] says, "I don't understand why we profit from having some bitter miserable person exposed against his will. How does that make a gay teenager happy to be gay? What kind of a role model does that establish? I don't think it does anything for anybody." Vilanch also sees the connection between Signorile and Hilton, saying, "It's the same thing I said when Michelangelo Signorile was doing it: What purpose does it serve? These are professional homosexuals. They are gay people for a living. They have to respect the rights of homosexuals who aren't professional."
"If somebody isn't going to willingly announce that they are a positive individual, with a positive outlook on life," Vilanch asks, "why would we want to include them among us?"
I don't think it's every public figure's responsibility to be a role model, exactly, and Vilanch seems to assume that anyone who's closeted must be bitter and miserable (though he may not be generalizing the way he appears to be). Nevertheless, he's right in the main. Who wants to join a "community" with its most shrieky, oafish members always at the ready to broadcast to everyone that you're gay, as if even they regarded it as some kind of compromising secret, before you've decided how best to go about it? (Michelangelo Signorile, who's so morally obtuse he's practically a reflex angle, naturally contributes a quotation or two of blurry rhetoric of his own defending outing also.)