Madonna vs Thatcher

Reginald D. Hunter stand-up routine:

Reginald: “Of all the female icons women are encouraged to reach for almost none of them reach for Thatcher.”

“I mean hell, they almost all reach for Madonna before they reach for Thatcher,”

Woman: “Well, absolutely. Madonna broke that glass ceiling that had been oppressing women for decades. Madonna showed women they could be sexy, healthy and vital well into their forties and fifties, she showed women that they could and should be smart business people.”

Reginald: “Some of that’s true, but how about this? Thatcher reached all the way to the top in the most male-dominated profession in the world and she didn’t shake her ass one time. She didn’t shake her ass, she didn’t undo her cleavage before she went into a meeting with the boys and she didn’t suck a dick to jump the queue, she was true to game.”

John Cage is the new Alphonse Allais

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yybn6iKmYdQ

While I was listening to Late Night Lab by Bart Vanhoudt, Bart posted his show on Facebook, I pressed the play button and heard “these sounds are in no sense accidental” like I always do, since it is the intro of the programme.

This phrase comes from the interviewer of the popular TV show I’ve Got a Secret who announces “Water Walk” (January, 1960), the title of a performance by John Cage.

This performance is, in a way, more important than  “4′33″.

“4’33″” was about high art.

“Water Walk” is nobrow.

Sorrentino is the new Fellini

Just saw Youth. Paolo Sorrentino is the new Fellini, albeit a much more likable one. I’ve always found the films of Fellini a bit pretentious and theatrical (see for example’s Fellini’s contribution to Boccaccio ’70, “The Temptations of Doctor Antonio”).

Not so with Sorrentino. This is what I want from cinema. Reveries and emotions. A mix of high and low culture. Laughter and tears. Lots of philosophy. And buckets of beauty.

P.S.: I recently saw another film on old age, by Haneke, Amour. How I hated that film, despite that Haneke has made some of the best films of the 2000s.

Chantal Akerman (1950 – 2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx2RNzl-p3Q

Chantal Akerman‘s debut film “Saute ma ville” (1968, above) turned out to be quite prophetic. Akerman committed suicide last week. Suicide continues to fascinate me. Sometimes, I get a strange feeling of comfort when yet another person commits suicide. It reminds me that I am not doing that badly. I may, at times, be unhappy, but not that unhappy.

There’s no doubt that some of the images are quite disturbing …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irlpvtwu1Rs&

The Secret World of Lewis Carroll

The “disturbing images” in question are photos taken by Lewis Carroll. Click [1] to see them in book format.

The Secret World of Lewis Carroll uncovered a photo of Lorina Liddell[2] in the archives of the Musée Cantini.

As you can see above, the photo in the BBC programme only uses the top half of Lorina.

Click here[3] for the whole picture.

The photo sheds new light on the “was Lewis Carroll a pedophile” question.

Forest Xylophone (2011)

Forest Xylophone is a giant musical instrument built for a 2011 commercial for a cellphone with a wooden casing. The xylophone is operated by a simple wooden ball and plays Bach’s “Cantata 147”.

The contraption and the music it produces are both extremely likable.

It is reminiscent of The Way Things Go (1987) by Fischli and Weiss which I elected World Art Classic #463[1] last year.

I wonder if it’s still there? Anyone?

Kant in film, and, the sexual lives of philosophers

Prompted by my previous post on Nietzsche in film, here is an interesting film on the life of Immanuel Kant, more particularly on his last days.

The film, Les Derniers Jours d’Emmanuel Kant is based on The Last Days of Immanuel Kant by English writer Thomas De Quincey.

In the film, Kant approaches the end of his life, which is entirely punctuated by habits acquired over many years. The leaving of his butler Martin Lampe will upset this well planned routine.

In the scene above, Kant reads a letter asking for help. It is a letter by Maria von Herbert, sent in August 1791.

The letter was also mentioned in La vie sexuelle d’Emmanuel Kant, about which I have written here.

Like so many philosophers, Kant was not sexually active. For all we know, Immanuel Kant died a virgin. I find this very interesting.

So did Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Genealogy of Morals he says on married philosophers:

“the philosopher shudders mortally at marriage, together with all that could persuade him to it—marriage as a fatal hindrance on the way to the optimum. Up to the present what great philosophers have been married? Heracleitus, Plato,Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauer—they were not married, and, further, one cannot imagine them as married. A married philosopher belongs to comedy, that is my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates—the malicious Socrates married himself [to Xanthippe], it seems, ironice, just to prove this very rule.”

So did Jacques Derrida.

Asked what would he like to see in a documentary on a major philosopher, such as Hegel or Heidegger, Derrida replies he would want them to speak of their sexuality and ‘the part that love plays in their life’. He criticizes the dissimulation of such philosophers concerning their sex lives – ‘why have they erased their private life from their work?’